


At the seashore

by Lauand



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Saiyuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Crossover, I Don't Even Know, It was supposed to be just a small study on the relationship, M/M, Nyarlathotep - Freeform, Selkies, Warning: Kanan's backstory remains pretty much unchanged and there are many potential triggers in it, cthulhu - Freeform, lighthouse au, suddenly a wild plot appears
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 102
Words: 63,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauand/pseuds/Lauand
Summary: Hakkai is a selkie with a penchant for danger. Gojyo is... well, Gojyo.
Relationships: Cho Gonou/Cho Kanan, Cho Hakkai/Sha Gojyo
Comments: 87
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are a bunch of mythological creatures here. No previous knowledge of Cthulhu Mythos is required to read this (although I researched the shit out of them for everything to fit, they are strangely overlappable with Saiyuki), but some basic knowledge about what a selkie is and what kappas are supposed to do is advisable to better understand certain parts (just a quick search in wikipedia will do; this story is more about feelings than about data and I'm making up and bastardazing most of it anyway).
> 
> My most heartfelt thanks to Avierra, as always, for the beta-reading (you're so fantastic I have no words) and to Indelicateink for the support (it's pretty much thanks to you that this is being posted). Any remaining mistake is, of course, mine.
> 
> Daily updates, if everything goes as planned.

Gojyo noticed the hide on the armchair. Of course he did. He always noticed it. He brushed his fingers against it. Lightly, with care. It was very soft. As always, he just left it there right after.

\-----

“You're doing it on purpose,” he told Hakkai much later, once they had come down a bit and gotten their breath back, but before sleep had had time to claim them.

“Mmmm,” Hakkai said, like not knowing what Gojyo referred to, like he didn't particularly care.

“It's... dangerous.”

Gojyo swore inwardly. That stupid second he had hesitated... Hakkai would know for sure that was not what he had initially meant to say.

“And?” Hakkai prompted, proving him right.

“And cruel,” Gojyo said. Quietly. Unwillingly.

Hakkai reached out and stroked Gojyo's cheek. It was more beard than stubble, what he wore these days. Gojyo couldn't help thinking that it couldn't be pleasant to feel that under your fingers. So unlike Hakkai's hide.

“I am not a good person, Gojyo,” he murmured. “Technically, I'm not a person at all, in fact.”

“Neither am I.”

Hakkai didn't stop his caress; he had known Gojyo was a kappa from the very beginning, even if he had never asked what he was doing so close to the sea.

“Oh, Gojyo; but you are good...”

Gojyo had never learned how to deal with compliments so, refusing to reply, he kissed Hakkai instead.


	2. Chapter 2

Gojyo tensed nearly imperceptibly when Hakkai touched his hair but didn't protest, not even when Hakkai's hands crept north, closer and closer to the top of his head. He just allowed it.

“Is this payback?” Hakkai murmured under his breath; Gojyo couldn't even be sure if he was supposed to answer or if it was just idle musing.

Hakkai gasped when he found it. Gojyo stubbornly forced himself to relax.

“Not the same.” Gojyo's voice was also quiet.

“Oh, I disagree,” Hakkai said, fingers playing with the rim. “It is at the very least equivalent, if not exactly identical.”

Gojyo sighed, still unable to feel completely at ease, but still refusing to push Hakkai away.

“It's not. You don't want my destruction.”

Hakkai actually laughed at that.

“You underestimate my nature,” he said, hands buried in Gojyo's hair, water tempting his fingertips. “Of course I do want your destruction.”

“Not as much as I want you to stay.”

Hakkai's eyes widened at that. Not because he didn't know, but because he hadn't expected Gojyo to actually say it. It was his turn to sigh, breath caressing Gojyo's skin when he did. Slowly, reluctantly, he withdrew his hands and let them rest on Gojyo's shoulders.

“So it is payback,” Hakkai said. Before Gojyo could protest, Hakkai kissed him. There was nothing more fascinanting than being perfectly matched in danger and cruelty by someone so fundamentally good.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been raining that day. Not such a rare occurrence, it rained more often than not this far north. It was okay, Gojyo missed sweet water, rain was the next best thing. But it made seeing harder-- being drunk didn't help, either-- and that's why (the rain, not the alcohol, Gojyo would insist) he tripped on the, in hindsight, rather large lump lying across the path to his lighthouse.

By nature, Gojyo was attracted to things he should just well leave alone, so he softly kicked the lump when he made out its general shape as a half-naked guy covered in some sort of pelt and a great deal of blood.

“Oi,” he called, “you alive?”

Every possible reply to that would be troublesome. Every possible action that Gojyo took would be a mistake. People in the village would suspect him, either for hiding a criminal, kidnapping a victim, burying a body or leaving it to rot in the incriminating pathway to his home. Gojyo couldn't blame them, it didn't exactly look good.

The guy didn't moan, as one would have expected, he just opened one eye and looked back at Gojyo. Gojyo would swear later that he had seen that eye sparkle with laughter, which made no sense, especially when Gojyo flipped the prone body and saw the gash in its abdomen.

“Just my luck,” Gojyo sighed, crouching to lift the guy's body, “other people find coins, you know. Lost jewelry. Stray dogs. I don't even know what the fuck you are, aside from a big, fat mess.”

The guy let out a reluctant groan when jostled, but otherwise kept silent, laughter still dancing in his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

Hakkai's mind worked as fast and diligently as his fingers as he untied Gojyo from the chair. Hiding the bodies and cleaning the scene would never work: there was too much blood, and too many pieces to collect, too much evidence to bury. So setting it up, it was. Rival gang. That sounded feasible and the kind of thing law inforcement was always ready to buy. He wished he had paid more attention when Banri talked, he could use the information. Or better, he wished he had killed him on the spot in the first place. He wouldn't make that same mistake twice.

“So...” Gojyo's hesitation didn't sound caused by his battered face; it was not his difficulty moving his mandible that caused the pause in his speech, “...you see now that maybe I'm not as good as you thought I was.”

The thought was so jarring that Hakkai actually stopped what he was doing. He looked at Gojyo's face to see if he was being sarcastic, which was not his style, not really, but these were strenous circumstances and sometimes people acted out of character when-- no, Gojyo had his default cocky grin on, like... boasting about his badassery? Hakkai considered the thought, Gojyo liked presenting himself as a tough guy, but it made no sense, not even at present. There was something behind that bravado front, something shifty, something...

_He's afraid_ , Hakkai realized, _not of the beating, not of dying and not of Banri not coming back, he already knew he wouldn't. Not of what I've done, what I could do to him. He's afraid he's disappointed me. He's afraid I'll leave._

“Gojyo,” he said coldly, getting back to work and managing to release the last knot, “if there's most definitely and without a doubt something maybe you're not as much of as I thought you were it's clever, let alone self-aware.”

As if attempting to prove him right, Gojyo frowned in confusion.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Hakkai also wanted very much to kill Gojyo's stepmother. Maybe his brother, too. All the people who had made Gojyo blind to his own worth. It was remarkable, really, the amount of people he wished he could torture to death, especially after today's binge.

He wondered, with an unpleasant shiver, if that was what love felt like.


	5. Chapter 5

“Th'fuck,” Gojyo said, before realizing it was maybe not a very nice thing to say under the circumstances, “I mean... no, wait, I think I totally meant th'fuck.”

Hakkai was a willowy guy. Delicate wrists, angular hipbones, nimble fingers, perfectly defined jaw. He was, if Gojyo was allowed to say so, beautiful. So, when Gojyo had asked to see him in his seal form, he had actually thought he would be... well a seal. The cute kind that actually were often seen playing in the delta. Not a fucking three ton monstrosity.

Hakkai called. Or bellowed. Or whatever it was miroungas did. It was blood-curdling.Then he started to grotesquely move through the sand towards Gojyo. He was like a titanic sausage trying to jump-creep his way towards a slightly horrified river kappa.

“Holy sh--” Gojyo turned heels and ran like the devil.

Hakkai's belly-deep guffaws could be heard even from the top of the rocks where Gojyo had managed to climb. Tempting as he was in human form, lying naked on the cold sand, Gojyo refused to come down to him just out of spite.


	6. Chapter 6

The light glinted off the knife Hakkai had brought to bed. Gojyo, unable to feel even properly disturbed, just sighed and ran his hand through his red hair when he spotted it.

Hakkai gently placed the very sharp blade against Gojyo's chest, precisely on the point where his lips had been just a moment before. Gojyo narrowed his eyes but said nothing, did nothing to stop him. 

“May I mark you?” Hakkai whispered, his voice unaccustomedly reverent.

“No,” Gojyo said.

Hakkai looked at him, surprised. Like he knew Gojyo didn't really mind the scarring, or the blood, or the pain, or how really fucked up it was. Like he expected Gojyo to actually crave it. 

“You're careless with the things you own,” Gojyo explained.

Hakkai grinned and just let the knife fall with a musical tinkle to the floor when he went up to kiss Gojyo's mouth.


	7. Chapter 7

“Yes, Gojyo?”

Gojyo hadn't said a word. He was just standing in the kitchen and maybe he had been staring a Hakkai, but Hakkai had his back to him and he shouldn't have been able to know Gojyo was staring, much less had a question in his mind. Because Gojyo did. Have a question, that is.

“Are we exclusive?”

Hakkai paused for a second but didn't turn.

“I don't know... are we?” he asked back.

Oh, shit. That was... well, not what he had wanted to hear, that's for sure, but it was also kind of... fair? He was the one who used to look for the company of the ladies at the bar, after all. He still did, for luck, when he was playing, but now it didn't get past them sitting on his lap for a couple of hands and maybe a kiss or two. And the thing was, he sort of wanted to say yes, he didn't really need the money from the poker with the lighthouse and the fishing, but on the other hand, he didn't want to close that door forever either and, well, to be honest, it was not the best idea to put all of your eggs in the same basket, especially not when that basket was as volatile as Hakkai. And it was actually not about the eggs per se, it was more about the mess they would leave behind if they all broke. Okay, weird example. There was a reason why Gojyo didn't have relationships talks, not even with himself.

“I don't know, either.” Gojyo said in the end. Hakkai had resumed his task a while ago and continued to do so unaware of (or refusing to acknowledge) the awkward atmosphere.

Gojyo left the kitchen quietly, a bitter taste in his mouth.


	8. Chapter 8

“You don't have to, you know,” Gojyo said. More often than not, Hakkai was the one in charge of doing the chores. Today, he was preparing lunch. What Gojyo actually meant was 'stop doing the housework and be a slob like me because you're making me feel obligated to do my share and I really don't want to'.

“I know,” Hakkai replied. He actually meant 'I know'.

Gojyo frowned. Then he saw what Hakkai was making and his frown deepened.

“You know that most myths about kappas are not really true, right?”

Hakkai seemed endlessly fascinated with Gojyo's nature and put the legends to the test at any given opportunity.

“You don't like cucumber sandwiches, then?” he asked.

Gojyo fucking loved cucumber sandwiches, that was not the issue. What he sort of hated was the idea of his species determining what he liked or disliked. 

“I'm giving you raw squid for dinner,” Gojyo decided, eyes narrowed under his persisting frown.

“Yes, Gojyo,” Hakkai, for once, seemed to be trying to hide his smile instead of parading it off.

“You're evil.”

Before Hakkai could acquiesce again, Gojyo kissed the corner of his mouth and took his sandwich to the living room.


	9. Chapter 9

It was late one night that Gojyo came home from the bar and found Hakkai still awake, drinking tea by the hearth; because nobody said so in the legends, but if Hakkai was anything to go by, selkies drank an unholy amount of tea.

“Okay, apparently we are,” Gojyo said as soon as he closed the door.

“Oh?” Hakkai asked, because that had come out of nowhere and he didn't know what Gojyo was talking about.

“Exclusive. We are. Well, I am. I... I can't stand the idea of fucking someone who isn't you.”

“Oh.” Hakkai said, this time without interrogative inflexion, “that's... very sweet.”

“Ehm... thanks?” Gojyo frowned, because even he realized that had been rather crude and artless. “Man, you're so fucking weird...”

Hakkai grinned, but Gojyo wasn't freaked out this time because it was the kind of grin that reached Hakkai's eyes and danced in them with the reflection of the fire.


	10. Chapter 10

Gojyo had a bad feeling about this.

The thing was, it had been totally unintentional; Gojyo hadn't even thought about it or even realized what he had done until he saw Hakkai's stricken face, eyes fixed on the couch, where his hide was supposed to be but wasn't. It had only lasted a second, but Hakkai losing control of his facial expression was an extraordinary occurrence very difficult to ignore. 

After that second, though, he resumed his smiling and kept talking animatedly with Sanzo. Gojyo felt like shit, probably more panicked than Hakkai was, but he couldn't talk to him about it, not right now, with Sanzo and Goku in the lighthouse.

It was only after they left, Gojyo tense and distracted the whole time, that he tried to explain.

“It's in the bedroom, right on the bed, I didn't--”

“I know, Gojyo.”

“It's just--”

“I know.”

And the thing was that the grin on Hakkai's face wasn't the extra-polite, I-am-insincerely-trying-to-assuage-your-fears one, much less the I-am-so-pissed-off-at-you-right-now one. It was the one with the edge, the one he had when he was getting off on something he shouldn't.

Yeah, Gojyo had a very bad feeling about this.


	11. Chapter 11

“Your facial hair is getting out of hand, Gojyo. Would you like me to shave you?”

Gojyo narrowed his eyes. This had come out of nowhere, like most things that Hakkai said to start a conversation did.

“I thought you liked my beard.”

“I do.”

This kind of nonsensical shit happened so often that Gojyo was starting to get the hang of it.

“You just want to have an excuse to put a straight razor against my throat, don't you?”

Hakkai stepped closer and caressed Gojyo's hairy cheek.

“If you give me this, I will let you eat me out,” he whispered.

Gojyo closed his eyes and shivered, as he often did when Hakkai was so near and so absolutely focused on him.

“The shirikodama is a myth, you know,” Gojyo murmured back, leaning unconsciously towards Hakkai's warmth. “You're not going to be courting death or putting me against the wall. Not that way.”

Hakkai just mmed and came closer still, his other hand coming up to graze Gojyo's lips. 

“On the other hand,” Gojyo continued, even quieter than before, “some people say it just refers to the prostate. And even if I'm not particularly interested in sucking it out of you and eating it, I do have a fantastically long and strong tongue, even if that's not the kind of thrill you were after.”

Hakkai didn't know how to explain that every kind of thrill that Gojyo provided was extremely coveted and sought after, so he just kissed him instead.


	12. Chapter 12

Goku was really good at fighting. Gojyo had to give it his all when they were rough-housing in the beach and still, most of the time, the kid kicked his sorry ass.

“Don't!” Goku exclaimed, jumping back, alarmed for the first time that Gojyo had seen. “You can't knock my headband off!”

“Ok, ok...” Gojyo kept his distance and even raised his hands to show that this was time out in a 'see? I'm harmless' universal gesture. “What's the deal, kid?”

“I'm... I haven't... I...”

“Spit it out,” Gojyo said.

Goku took air and made a decision.

“I am an ass-huge demon, you see.”

Gojyo blinked. Nope, he didn't see. Goku looked like a scruffy boy: too young, too innocent, too good-hearted to be anything but the scruffy boy he looked like.

“Ok, whatever,” he said anyway, rolling his eyes a little bit.

“Dude, I'm serious.”

Gojyo could see that he was. It was not that he didn't believe him. It was that he believed him so much that he wasn't even surprised.

“I know, kid,” he said, wondering what the fuck was wrong with his lighthouse that it seemed to attract all the supernatural beings in a ten thousand mile radius. “I know. It's alright.”


	13. Chapter 13

Gojyo came home hoping for a cucumber sandwich for dinner. That was not what he got.

“Yo, Hakk-- hi, beautiful,” it was automatic for him to switch tracks, he wasn't even conscious he did it. She hadn't been visible from the door, but at the kitchen table, opposite to Hakkai, there was a beautiful, shy-looking woman.

The first thing Gojyo noticed, strangely enough, was the tea. Which was normal, Hakkai offered tea even to the fucking postman, and Gojyo knew for a fact that Hakkai hated his guts. He would invite the damned seagulls for tea if Gojyo wasn't careful. It was after he had taken on the whole picture when he noticed the bruises. Stains of blood on their clothes. A bandaged wrist. Next was the smell. The woman (perfect posture, demure demeanor, delicate bone structure) smelled like the sea. Gojyo didn't know much, but he knew fish. That woman wasn't human.

“Ok, I think I don't want to know,” he said, grabbing his jacket once again, “I'll go up and check the lamp.”

* * *

“You do want to know, don't you,” Hakkai asked a bit later.

Gojyo cast a sidelong glance at him before taking the next drag from his cigarette. For someone as attuned to Gojyo's body language as Hakkai was, it was even more chastising than a reproach spoken aloud. The sound of the rotor and the bright light of the lamp was not really the right atmosphere for an important conversation, but they were used to making do.

“Yaone-san's school is trying to do something they really shouldn't, something that Sanzo wants to prevent and, as extension, something I'm sworn-bound to hinder, too.”

Knowing that Hakkai had been a teacher himself, Gojyo thought for a crazy moment that it was some stupid shit about kids, and playgrounds and educational rivalry. Then he remembered the smell.

“School as in fish... she's a mermaid.”

“That she is.”

Gojyo frowned. Selkies and sirens didn't get along, everybody knew that.

“That explains why you were bruised, not why you invited her in for tea.”

Hakkai smiled. “It's the polite thing to do,” he cheerfully said.

Gojyo refrained from flicking the butt at him, but barely so.

“She doesn't like it anymore than we do, what her people are doing. She's conflicted,” Hakkai said, as if that explained letting an enemy in their home, drinking tea with them after beating the shit out of each other. “She's loyal to her prince, but not to her queen.”

“Well, a civil war sounds convenient.”

“The prince _is_ loyal to the queen. It's complicated.”

Gojyo nodded, as if he understood. It was fine that he didn't. He couldn't give a shit about merpeople's politics.

“Is that why you are here?” Gojyo asked.

“I actually came to fetch you for dinner,” Hakkai smiled. He knew what Gojyo was really asking. Gojyo knew that he knew, but didn't insist. Hakkai suspected that he was never pushy because insisting would provide proof that Gojyo cared one way or another and he was wary to put himself in such a vulnerable position.

Hakkai took Gojyo's cigarrete and, after taking a long drag, he let it fall to the floor and stubbed it under his sole. Ignoring Gojyo's face of deep shock, he took the kappa's hand and started to drag him down the stairs. Hakkai started to talk before being conscious of having made the decision to do it.

“I need to start to learn how to do magic.” The crazy thing was that Hakkai sounded dead-serious. Then he added in a softer voice: “And no, Gojyo, that's not why I am here.”

Gojyo couldn't tell if that made him feel more left out of everything that was going on around him or less.


	14. Chapter 14

Suddenly, there were mysterious books with leather covers with five point stars engraved on them. They looked so old and silly that Gojyo actually suspected they were props from a theater company and not real books.

“Do not read the grimoires, Gojyo.”

“No prob,” he replied, sounding amused. Because he was. Hakkai, on the other hand, was not.

“I'm deadly serious. Please, don't look into the books,” Hakkai insisted, subtly changing to a more common vocabulary in case Gojyo wasn't familiar with the terminology.

Gojyo looked on the brink of laughter, so Hakkai's scowl deepened. It wasn't the wording of the first sentence that was the problem, then. Suddenly, he realized. Not that he hadn't noticed, but he had always assumed that there were no books in the lighthouse because it was too hard to fit rectangular shelves to the curved walls and Gojyo lacked the motivation to make some custom shelves himself. It had been a really stupid deduction, now that Hakkai thought about it.

“How can you even play poker without reading the numbers and the letters? Or the prices in the market? How can you know they are giving you back the right change?” Hakkai sounded totally flabbergasted and not a little appalled. 

Gojyo rolled his eyes.

“Not knowing how to read doesn't mean I'm stupid, man.”

Hakkai blinked. He then had the good grace to look chastised.

“No, of course not. I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention to suggest otherwise. I humbly apologize.”

“Alright,” Gojyo shrugged. “Apologies accepted.”

“We'll start the lessons in two weeks,” Hakkai announced before turning around and walking to the kitchen.”

“Wait, wha--? Hakkai!” Gojyo followed, even if he knew this was a lost battle.


	15. Chapter 15

Learning was all about motivation, Hakkai knew. If you managed to manipulate someone into _wanting_ to do something, chances were, they would end up doing it. And that was why Hakkai had promised to get Gojyo whatever he chose to write on the brand new magnetic notepad attached to their fridge.

It had started out pretty tame. The very first day, there was just one word on the notepad.

'Beer', it said.

So Hakkai bought a six pack that day. He even decided on Gojyo's preferred brand, because brilliant homework deserved to be rewarded.

Next was 'cigarets'.

Hakkai got him a pack of Marlboro. When Gojyo complained, he stipulated that he would get Gojyo whatever he wrote because he had promised, but that Hakkai was free to interpret the word as he saw fit if Gojyo didn't write down the specifics or if he didn't double-check the ortography.

The next day, Hakkai laughed when he saw the new note.

'A pony', it said.

It only took Hakkai a handful of minutes to draw a beautiful pony and attach the drawing to the fridge with another magnet.

It became routine to the point that Hakkai would actually be looking forward to seeing what Gojyo's irregular, childish handwriting would say each day. Sometimes it was an actual grocery list, sometimes it was Gojyo putting Hakkai's wit to the test.

One night, Hakkai arrived home and spotted a new note when he entered the kitchen. There was no spoken rule about it, but usually the notes appeared during the morning, not after dusk. Hakkai walked closer to read it. The letters were as clumsily done as ever, but Hakkai had the impression (or maybe it was just wishful thinking) that Gojyo had put an extra effort on this one, short as it was.

'You', it read.

Hakkai didn't waste time and started undressing as he went to find Gojyo, letting the garments for once carelessly fall where they would.

He found him in the living room, sitting on the couch with a children's book in one hand, a beer in the other and a scowl of concentration on his brow.

“You're the best pupil I've ever had,” Hakkai confessed as he sank down, naked, onto Gojyo's lap.


	16. Chapter 16

Sanzo had two speeds when talking. Either he was declaiming and his voice carried miles and miles without losing its clarity, or he was drawling so badly that even the cigarette on his lips had trouble decyphering his speech.

“This is your fucking fault,” Hakkai thought he had said. He got official confirmation when Sanzo shoved the letter at him. Oh, yes. That was, without a doubt, what he had said.

In the badly folded paper stood, in capital letters, a very concise and-- with a surge of pride Hakkai couldn't help noticing-- perfectly correct message, if maybe a bit skewed and not very regular in its lines.

'FUCK YOU, YOU ASSHOLE!” it said.

“Ha, ha, marvelous, don't you think?”

Obviously Sanzo didn't, because next he knew, Hakkai was ducking to avoid being whacked with a newspaper. He took advantage of the distraction to palm the letter, but his laughter was completely sincere for once.


	17. Chapter 17

The day he ended up getting drunk with his brother after seriously beating the shit out of each other, he understood Hakkai and Yaone a bit better. 

“The fuck you mean you live with them? You can't breath salt water, you can't let the sea get into your... inside the... whatsit... the fucking ashtrays on our heads, what do we call that shit again?”

Jie-- no, Dokugakuji. Shit, there was no way he could think of him as that. Jien, then, downed another shot of whisky.

“Kou's people dabble with things they shouldn't. They can do... things. It has a price, but they don't mind paying it.”

“You can't wave a magic wand and suddenly switch species,” Gojyo protested.

“No... it's a bit more complicated than that,” which, if Gojyo was getting this right, was Jien admitting that was pretty much what had happened.

Gojyo by-passed the shot glass and drank directly from the bottle, wiping his mouth right after with the back of his hand.

“So it's 'Kou' now, hnn?” he asked instead of demanding an explanation he was likely not to believe, or even understand.

Jien didn't seem embarrassed by the teasing, but his eyes went soft.

“He's a good prince. And a good man. He saved me. He's worth it.”

Gojyo's eyes narrowed.

“Worth what?” he asked.

“Worth betraying.”

Gojyo had had a lot of practice listening to mysterious contradictions and half truths and hidden meanings and shit. Hakkai did it all the time. Even Sanzo, the fucker, just to be pretend he was interesting, Gojyo was sure. But even used as he was to that kind of crap, it was still hard to know what the fuck his brother was trying to say.

“Not you, too,” he muttered under his breath.

“It will mean losing him forever, you see” Jien explained. “He will hate us, me and Yaone, the people who love him most in the world, the people who owe him our lives and all that we are and will ever be. He will never forgive us for plotting without his knowledge, for doing this for him and for Lirin without telling him or giving him the choice. We are going to sacrifice the thing most precious to us: his respect, his friendship, his regard. And we are going to do it because if the queen and her magicians complete the invocation and call forth what they are intending to summon, we will all die, or go mad, or both. Lots of people have gone batshit crazy already. It starts with a nightmare, right? And then another, and you can't really remember what you dreamed, but it was awful and a part of you knows, even if you can't access the information. So you don't want to sleep. That means that you're not in your right mind when awake, fearing the moment when you won't be able to keep your eyes open anymore and fall sleep and dream again and you can't tell what's real anymore because... because the dream is actually a glimpse of a reality that is or will be. A reality beyond your comprehension. So you can't process it and go mad. It's... it's like a disease. It's affecting more and more of us. It has to be stopped. It... it has to be stopped.”

Gojyo thrust the bottle at Jien. He wasn't sure what the madness had to do with the queen's plans but he would be damned if he made his brother tear himself apart trying to explain.

“Don't know why we had to fight, then,” Gojyo murmured why Jien drank. “You've bruised my ass so hard that Hakkai is going to look at me funny when I next try to sit down.” 

“Aah, Hakkai...” Jien smirked after putting the bottle down again. “I see.”

“No, you probably don't,” Gojyo disagreed. “He's... he's not like your prince. He's not really good, you know. But the other thing? Hell, yeah.”

“Worth it?”

“Worth it. Worth everything.”

Jien was still smirking when he grabbed the bottle again just a second before Gojyo would.


	18. Chapter 18

Gojyo was used to being alone, but that didn't mean that he actually liked it, so when Hakkai started studying and sitting indoors with Sanzo, he somehow ended up doing the opposite (not studying and exercising outdoors) with Goku. From rough-housing on the beach they had gone, without really making the actual decision to do so, to actual sparring; the weird thing was that Goku, being better at it than Gojyo, had started teaching the kappa basic movements with a fighting stick. Apparently, everybody was better at everything than he was.

When Gojyo went out of breath, they usually wound down on the sand, looking at the sea while Gojyo drank beer and Goku just enjoyed the view, sound and feel of the sea. At first Gojyo had brought booze also for the kid because, well, he had started drinking pretty early in life and he had come out okay, hadn't he? But Goku had adamantly refused saying that it really was a horrible idea.

“How old are you, anyway?” Gojyo asked.

“Older than I look,” Goku replied with a smile. He sure sounded like a brat, though, if someone asked Gojyo. “It's not about me being legal, it's about keeping my wits around me. Sanzo would totes kill me dead if he caught me drinking.”

“Hn, Sanzo,” Gojyo scoffed.

“You don't like him very much, do you?”

“I hate his guts,” Gojyo replied. He had thought it was both obvious and an universally shared feeling, but the kid was strangely loyal to the bastard. “Why don't you?”

Goku shrugged.

“He's nice.”

Gojyo looked at Goku as if he were shitting him. He probably was. 

“He's an asshole,” Gojyo corrected.

Goku shrugged again.

“Maybe. But he's a nice asshole.”

“That's just not right. You can't be a nice asshole,” Gojyo argued, “it's impossible.”

Goku didn't reply, he just looked at the sea with a soft smile on his dumbass face. Then Gojyo thought of Hakkai. That gave him pause.

“Ok,” he admitted to the kid, “maybe it is possible, after all.”


	19. Chapter 19

It's not that Gojyo was jealous by nature. He was not. That didn't mean he didn't have insecurities-- he had plenty-- it was just that he was not the controlling type. At some point, everybody left, but that was fine. Sort of fine. Okay, not fine, but that was just how it was. Getting worked up about it didn't change a thing, did it? He was nobody to tell anyone what they should do, who they should meet or how they should act. Because he sure hadn't appreciated it when others had tried to tell him in the past, and Gojyo was very good at this 'don't do to others what you don't want done to you' crap. Except maybe when ripping guys off at poker. But, well, you can't be an excellent person all the time.

So it was sort of unexpected when he found himself annoyed by the connection that had seemed to develop between Hakkai and Sanzo. And the thing was that Gojyo knew for a fact that it was not sexual, that Hakkai wasn't interested in Sanzo that way and that Sanzo would never, ever steal Hakkai's hide, not because he couldn't or because he thought it was wrong, but because he honestly didn't want it. Gojyo was sure. Reasonably sure. But it not being about lust only made things worse, in a way. Sex could be superficial. What Sanzo and Hakkai had was not. So, sometimes, Gojyo would just feel inadequate while they just sat in contemplative silence for a small eternity until Sanzo, without looking at Hakkai in any way, would state in that deep, stupid voice of his something equally deep and stupid that made no apparent sense like 'the lillies bloom under the midnight sun' or some shit and Hakkai would sagely nod and understand that what Sanzo was trying to say was that the sole of his right foot itched.

So, no, Gojyo wasn't really jealous, but that didn't mean that it was not still hard at times not to take Hakkai's hide out of sight when Sanzo came to visit.


	20. Chapter 20

It was around that time that Gojyo noticed the nightmares. And the worst thing was that he couldn't be sure when they had started, because Hakkai had the weirdest sleeping habits and sometimes wouldn't come to bed until Gojyo was sound asleep and sometimes he wouldn't come to bed at all. He always got up before Gojyo, who was most definitely not a morning person and had to take care of the lamp at night, so it was with an unpleasant turn on his stomach that Gojyo realized he didn't know when the dreams had began. But he could tell when they were ending. They were ending _now_.

“Go...Gojyo?” Hakkai asked, still disoriented, after Gojyo had not-so-gently shaken him awake.

“Hakkai,” Gojyo said, scared shitless.

Jien had said that people affected by the nightmares didn't usually remember what they had been dreaming about but, after giving Hakkai a moment to wake up and center himself, Gojyo could see how his eyes got the kind of focus that said he knew what was going on.

“What do you need?” Gojyo asked quietly.

“Ha, ha,” Hakkai deflected, “I'm okay now.”

“You were mumbling in your sleep.”

Hakkai visibly got wary at that. It must be this newly-woken-up thing, he was usually pretty good at keeping his feelings out of his face.

“What is it that I was saying?” he asked.

“Dunno, it was a weird-ass language. It sounded a bit like when Goku's trying to chew, swallow and speak at the same time.”

Hakkai paused for a couple of seconds. He then smiled in a reassuring manner. Gojyo didn't know how to tell him that he really, really sucked at it.

“It's okay, Gojyo,” he said. “You know how dreams are, they don't make sense, it's actually quite normal that people mutter nonsense when asleep. Let's go back to sleep.”

Usually Gojyo humoured Hakkai when he did this thing of pretending everything was all right because Gojyo didn't want to push the man if Hakkai didn't really want to tell him something. Gojyo understood the desire for privacy and he was okay with letting people say whatever they wanted to say and not more than that. But this was serious shit. Gojyo wasn't going to turn over and go back to sleep while Hakkai went silently crazy, no fucking way.

“Jie—Dokugakuji told me about the dreams. About people going slowly mad, going on murdering sprees or killing themselves. Eating other people.” Gojyo took a deep breath, “you didn't have that much sanity to begin with, so tell me what the fuck I can do.”

Hakkai lay down again and smiled, this time without trace of bullshitting, which was a relief. Gojyo lay down, too, facing him. Hakkai reached out and caressed Gojyo's cheek. There was a new beard there. Gojyo's facial hair grew out fast.

“I can't tell you,” Hakkai said. “But do not worry, I'm not half as deranged as you may think.”

“Hakkai, you plucked out your own eye and threw it to a random fucker who came here to kill you.”

“Ha, ha, I did, didn't I? Ha, ha, ha.”

Worst thing was, Gojyo didn't know if he intentionally sounded like he missed those 'good old times' because that was how Hakkai's warped sense of humor worked or because he actually missed those good old times.

“Not helping, Hakkai.”

Apparently it was the sense of humor thing, because Hakkai dropped the act and just looked sad, even if he was still smiling.

“I can't tell you, Gojyo,” he repeated, “you not knowing is important in itself. If you don't know, you won't believe and the lack of faith is your best protection against what's going on.”

“But--”

“You are right to suspect my grip on sanity is not the best. That's why I need you to ground me, to be the rock that tethers my mind to the solidness of your reality.” Hakkai's hand crept once again towards Gojyo, but stilled before touching him, as if afraid of tainting him. “I know it's hard on you, and unfair. But you are already helping.”

Gojyo pressed his lips together to prevent the words from escaping.

But I don't want to help, he thought, I want to _do_.

Gojyo was sort of fed up with being the sidekick, or the unsuspecting audience, or worse, the fucking damsel in distress. But this was more important than his ego, more important than his feelings of frustration and insignificance, so he kept quiet. If being in the background just so that Hakkai had somewhere to fall back on which was not an empty abyss was what was required of him, he would fucking do it. He could start right now, in fact. He would guard Hakkai's dreams.

And so, he clumsily gathered Hakkai in his arms (not that he wasn't usually good at it, but it was not that easy to make an embrace look smooth when both participants were already lying on their sides) and hugged him tight, comforted in a way by the sheer physicality of Hakkai's body, his warmth, his smell, a sensual contrast to his usual ethereal and elusive appearance.

It was strange, Gojyo thought, to be put in the place of the anchor, to be for once the one to ground someone else. It was strange, finding someone more self-destructive than he was.


	21. Chapter 21

If asked, Gojyo wouldn't have been able to say what was worse: that he had to be the host of strategic meetings from which he was systematically excluded or that Hakkai still left his fucking hide around in the presence of people who, formerly related to him or not, could very well be considered their enemies.

Actually, Gojyo could laugh at his past self for feeling the itch when Sanzo was around. It was like insects crawling under his skin when Yaone and Jien were in the lighthouse. And the fact that he was _ordered_ to go away while they discussed how to save this Kougaiji guy, or their people, or the fucking world for all Gojyo knew, was adding insult to injury because he was forced to leave Hakkai's hide behind, out of his sight, out of his, well, guardianship or whatever. He was not allowed in their big plans, okay, he could live with that. But they also wouldn't let him watch over Hakkai's freedom, and that compounded the hurt.

But that was not the problem, no, Gojyo liked to think he had a tough skin for that kind of shit. It was not the pain, it was the worry that gnawed at him. The temptation to take the hide upstairs with him. It was cold there, he could justify it if he finally decided to grab it, he had one thousand and one excuses ready. Maybe he'd do it next time. Yeah, that sounded about right. Next time. But for today, he would go to check the lamp with just his pack of Hi-Lites and a big armful of bitterness to keep him company.


	22. Chapter 22

Gojyo was bound to reach his limit sooner or later, but it was somehow still a bit of a surprise to Hakkai when he finally exploded.

“Dammit, Hakkai, I've never heard of anyone showing off their fucking weak spot and leaving it fucking open (or around, in your case) in everybody's (and their mothers') reach. The fuck are you trying to do?”

Showing admirable restraint as a token of respect towards Gojyo's feelings and the kappa's honest will to keep Hakkai safe without being annoyingly overprotective, Hakkai refrained from replying.

_You leave your heart open, lying around, and you show off your thirst for love all the time,_ he thought. But then he realized it wasn't the same and Gojyo did actually have a point. It wasn't that Gojyo was flaunting it, it was just that he was really bad at concealing it.


	23. Chapter 23

“Stop fucking with him.”

If Gojyo snapping had been a surprise, Sanzo berating him was nothing short of a shock. Hakkai was fantastically good at not missing a beat, though.

“I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about,” he pleasantly replied.

Sanzo looked at him as if he were stupid. It was a look he wore often, but it was maybe the first time he had directed it at Hakkai. The novelty was kind of thrilling, in a twisted way. But then, that was always Hakkai's favourite way.

“I thought you didn't like him,” Hakkai smiled.

“I don't,” Sanzo said; if anything, the look had even deepened its 'you're an idiot' quality.

There was a long silence while they both drank their tea. Sanzo was some kind of priest, but he was very far away from his area of influence, so to speak, this far up north. He still had managed to be given residence in the living quarters of the local church, though. Hakkai hadn't asked how he had achieved the feat, probably because he didn't particularly care as long as Sanzo had a kettle and tea leaves at hand whenever Hakkai came to visit.

“Then,” he asked, genuinely curious, “why are you trying to save him?”

“I'm not trying to save him, idiot,” Sanzo's eyeroll was so pointed that it could be nearly heard. “I'm trying to save you.”

“Oh.”

There was another long silence after that. 

“...I thought the gods saved no one.”

Sanzo smacked him with his harisen and, honestly delighted by how little he had expected it in spite of it being so typical from the man, Hakkai laughed.


	24. Chapter 24

“Thank you, Gojyo,” Hakkai said right before politely bowing. Bowing. As in, leaning forward with a straight back. Bowing.

“Erm, welcome?” Gojyo said, a bit wrong-footed but not too much after all this time.

Hakkai stood straight again and pressed his lips together in annoyance. Then turned back muttering to himself and taking mental notes about how 'of course, he should have known that was one of the false ones'.

It took Gojyo a while to get it, but when he did, he actually laughed.

“Hakkai, you realize that I often spar with Goku who, truth be said, doesn't pull his punches much; and that I have pretty acrobatic sex with you on a regular basis, right? I don't walk around balancing my head, you know. It's not something I can just _drop_.”

Hakkai kept muttering in what, in another person, Gojyo would have called a sulk. Gojyo couldn't help it; he laughed again.


	25. Chapter 25

“Gojyo, do you like children?”

From another person, that particular question would have raised red flags right and left. But Gojyo was pretty sure that this wasn't Hakkai's way to suggest they settle down and start a big family. Hakkai was far more subtle than that.

“Nope. Not really,” he said.

Hakkai mmed.

“Do you mean it as in 'no, I'm not particularly inclined to produce offspring anytime soon' or 'no, I'd rather have chicken for dinner'?”

“Hakkai...” Gojyo sighed.


	26. Chapter 26

“I thought you wanted me out of this,” Gojyo said as Hakkai traced the symbol on the skin of his hand. 

“There are a great many things that I want and that I am, notwithstanding, not to have,” he replied.

For a categorical statement of personal wisdom, Gojyo found that it kind of widely applied to everybody, so he suspected that it sounded less cool than Hakkai had probably intended.

“It rankles a little bit that you refuse to wear my mark but that you accept a foreign deity's,” Hakkai confessed after a long silence as he diligently worked. He said it lightly, with a smile, the way he usually did when he was inwardly seething.

“Not the same,” Gojyo murmured, resisting the urge to shrug. Hakkai would kill him if he disturbed his careful work. “This is a bargain, right? The mark is the price. If I ever accept yours, I don't want it to mean that I wanted something from you in return.”

“Aah, but Gojyo, of course you want something from me...”

“Nope, not if I have to pay for it,” Gojyo said, deadly serious. “I'd rather not have it. I thought you knew.”

“Gojyo...” Hakkai actually interrupted what he was doing to look at him. He looked like he wanted to apologize but didn't know how.

“Hm,” Gojyo nodded, still reluctant to shrug and ruin Hakkai's weird ritual. 

After looking at Gojyo for a bit longer, as if trying to convey something with his eyes (something that Gojyo couldn't really interpret because Hakkai was difficult enough to understand when he used words, let alone when he relied on fucking subtle facial cues), Hakkai resumed his work.

The sign was starting to stick, glowing softly on Gojyo's skin. It was weird as fuck. Gojyo decided to consider it a new and fashionable tattoo with that funny ink that shone in the dark but was invisible during the day.

“So, that's not really the sign on the cover of your books,” Gojyo mentioned.

Whatever it was that Hakkai was doing, it must require his visual attention, because he didn't look at Gojyo when he replied. Gojyo thought he saw his mouth tensing in a moue of displeasure.

“I told you not to rea--”

“It's on the fucking cover. The cover, Hakkai.”

Hakkai sighed, hands still tracing and retracing and retracing. It was soothing, in a way. 

“There are many different symbols and glyphs imbued with power. Some of them, like the one on your hand, are the personal signature of a god, or in this case, goddess. The one on the books is called the Elder Sign and it's meant to be a seal specifically designed to contain and keep away the Great Old Ones. The Great Old Ones are what you could consider gods of destruction, even if that's a pretty inexact definition on all accounts, since they are not precisely gods and destruction is not their main goal. But it's the consequence of them roaming free, and that's why the Elder Gods created the sign. It is also used for protection against evil, but it's a bit unclear if that's a proper, sanctioned use or just how humans distorted its original purpose throughout the ages. But it is, in origin, a barrier, a seal that can lock the Great Old Ones down, and keep the Sleeper in slumber.”

There was a long silence after that.

“That kind of sounds like taken right out of a movie,” Gojyo said in the end.

“Good,” Hakkai answered without looking at him, “your lack of faith works in your favour.”

Gojyo mmed again and managed to keep silent for a short while.

“So, how does this actually work?” he asked when he couldn't hold it in anymore.

“The weapon in particular or magic in general?” Hakkai sounded a bit more distracted than before, still with his eyes fixed in what he was doing.

“Ehm... both?”

Hakkai sighed.

“Magic doesn't really exist,” he said, making Gojyo feel vindicated and terribly confused at the same time, “it's just a different set of rules that apply when you're not human or from our known dimension. A little bit like traditional physics don't apply to, let's say, the inside of a supernova. Only quantum physics explain the reactions going on there because the circumstances are different, so the laws that regulate interactions between particles and energy are not what we are used to observe on our planet.”

“Uh-huh,” Gojyo said, hoping against hope that he didn't sound as if he hadn't understood a fucking word Hakkai had uttered.

“So, the weapon is not really in this dimension, but you can bring it here, to summon it, so to speak, if you ask a higher power, one who can understand and interact with these dimensions unknown to us, to bring it in for you, to act as the channel to grant you access to something that would be beyond your power and knowledge,” he explained. “This higher power, in this case, it's N'tse-Kaambl, who was worshipped once as Athena in the Ancient Greece but who is far older than that. She's a minor deity, but as one of the Elder Gods, she has a vested interest in keeping the Great Old Ones under control. And that's why she is willing to help us and grant you access to her weapon.”

Gojyo was pretty used to accepting weird shit without trying to understand it, but there was still something that didn't make much sense.

“Okay, but... what does this have to do with us? Or with Jien and-- I mean, Dokugakuji and Yaone? With Sanzo?”

Hakkai looked like he wanted to sigh again but was doing his best to repress the urge.

“Dokugakuji and Yaone are from R'lyeh. That's a lost city whose location was suspected to be somewhere in the south of the Pacific Ocean. Apparently, the rumors were wrong and it's here, in the north, close to your lighthouse. Their queen is trying to wake up the Great Old One that sleeps under the city. If she succeeds in her endeavour, we will all die, or go crazy, or both.”

Gojyo swallowed. It was exactly what Jien had said. Hakkai kept on working, now that he had said his piece. He looked unhappy to have been forced to spill the beans, but Gojyo appreciated not being kept in the dark anymore.

“Well,” Gojyo tried for lightness, knowing what Hakkai half expected, half wished from him, “more than a movie, it sounds like a fairytale.”

Hakkai's tense shoulders relaxed infinitesimaly.

“I need to start chanting now, so I won't be able to talk to you until I've finished. Please, do not interrumpt,” he said softly, “I have already said too much, anyway.”

Gojyo mmed his agreement and refrained from mentioning that kappas and selkies were considered to belong to fairytales, too, and that didn't make either Gojyo or Hakkai any less real.


	27. Chapter 27

It was not a magical sixth sense that told Gojyo to go to the beach when he woke up, in the middle of the night, alone in a cold bed. It was, rather, what he had felt like doing after waking up, in the middle of the night, alone in a cold bed.

The sea was powerful, both in a quiet and a loud way. It beckoned troubled souls with the depth of its calling. Apparently, any kind of troubled souls. 

So it was not that Gojyo was searching for Hakkai. Hakkai was old enough (and a mean bastard who could take care of himself) not to need a babysitter when he decided to go places in the dead of the night. The gods knew he did it often enough. But it was neither a surprise to find him there, looking at the waves, standing on the sand, letting the salty spray and the moonlight bathe him. 

Gojyo debated with himself to go to him or to turn tail and acknowledge Hakkai's right to brood alone. After all, Hakkai had gotten to the beach first, Gojyo could find another place to do his own brooding. The fact that Hakkai (who, without a doubt, knew Gojyo was there) was ignoring him wasn't really an indicator of what he would rather Gojyo did. Hakkai was difficult that way. He always had to make a conscious (and not inconsiderable) effort to give even the slightest hint about what he wanted whereas Gojyo usually fought tooth and nail to hide it (with, at least according to Hakkai, disastrous results). It was more often than not due to random happenstance and not to successful communication that they usually found a compromise that satisfied them both. So, yeah, no way to tell if his presence would be welcome or not.

Gojyo was used to act without thinking and make decisions on the run, so he wasn't particularly surprised (or worried) when his feet led him to Hakkai's side this time. 

He didn't greet him (neither did Hakkai), he just stood there on the sand, looking at the waves, letting the salty spray and the moonlight bathe him too.

It was a beautiful night. Which meant, basically, that it wasn't raining, because all nights were beautiful at the ocean's feet when your night vision didn't suck too much. It was cold, though, but Gojyo was a kappa and not particularly affected by low temperatures. 

They were there for a long time, enough for Gojyo to ascertain the tide was on the rise. Again more like an independent act than a thought-out decision, Gojyo's hand ended up brushing against Hakkai's.

“Holy fucking shit!” Gojyo cursed. Hakkai in seal form had maybe 300kg worth of fat as insulation, but as a man he was rather skinny and Gojyo should have known that he would be freezing. He was still not sure if Hakkai was in the right frame of mind to be coddled, though, so he just asked, “May I touch you?”

Hakkai refrained from pointing out that Gojyo had just done precisely that and answered instead in a quite voice, “Always”.

Which, Gojyo knew, was a big, fat lie, because leaving aside the sense of aloofness that Hakkai projected by default that discouraged casual touch from strangers, but which Gojyo found he was allowed to override on most days, sometimes Hakkai's tacit warning against people getting near was so fucking loud that even Gojyo knew, as sure as if Hakkai were screaming it in words, that he wanted to be left alone. Gojyo had learned soon in life, though, that “always” didn't really mean “always”, it was just a stronger way to express a sound “yes”, so he stepped behind Hakkai's slight form and slid his arms around his waist, spreading his hands so that they covered the biggest surface possible on Hakai's belly and torso. 

Gojyo could never tell if it was a conscious decision on Hakkai's part or the reflex that it would be in other, normal people, but the fact was that his body relaxed in Gojyo's warm embrace and he even covered Gojyo's arms with his own. 

Gojyo didn't tell him he was freezing. Not because he was totally convinced Hakkai knew (sometimes Hakkai could show an astounding lack of self-awareness), but because it was a superfluous thing to say anyway and the night and the sea and the times didn't call for it. He just breathed against Hakkai's temple and tightened his hug.

“Gojyo,” Hakkai said.

Aware that it was all Hakkai had wanted to say, Gojyo didn't prod him for more and just inhaled once more the air that carried the scent of sea salt and selkie's skin.


	28. Chapter 28

It took Gojyo a while to get used to his new, weird weapon. Previous sparring sessions with Goku and his sticks had helped with the shaft, but the crescent was still pretty much hit and miss at that point. For once, Gojyo was actually happy everybody was busy with their war council meetings and thus, only Goku could be witness to his fuck ups. Because, much as Hakkai got off on danger, he would actually frown upon Gojyo's attempts to behead himself. Not to mention Jien who, in the past, had gone further than anybody would have asked of him to prevent Gojyo ending up cloven in half. Goku was probably the least judgmental person Gojyo had ever known and he also happened to have a skewed view on what could be potentially life threatening, so he was kind of okay.

“Oh sh--” Gojyo didn't even have the time to finish cursing when he abruptly hit the sand. The swish of the blade above him was unexpectedly loud. A couple of red hairs fell down to the sand in front of his eyes. Gojyo fervently hoped they weren't part of his antennae, Hakkai would never miss the fact that they were gone if they were. “Ehhr, thank you, monkey,” he said to the sack of rocks that had taken him down, fast as a lightning, when he had lost control of the chained blade.

“No prob,” Goku replied, cheerful as always. 

“Hakkai would kill me if I came back home missing a limb. Or worse, dead.”

Not pointing out the incongruence of that thought, Goku just nodded.

“He would be very sad,” he agreed. Which was not what Gojyo had actually said, but even if Gojyo was too wary of assuming things to later be proven wrong, he was sort of grateful that Goku didn't have the same misgivings. 

After standing up and shaking the sand from his clothes, Goku invoked his nyoi-bo.

“Let's spar!” He suggested.

Gojyo passed his hand through his hair (luckily, his antennae felt as usual, Hakkai would never know about today's mishap) and got up, too. The damned monkey was tireless. It had to be all that food.

The shakujou tended to automatically disappear minutes after losing contact with Gojyo's skin, but apparently not enough time had passed for it to go back to wherever it went when it was not in Gojyo's hands, so Gojyo picked it up and checked its state. It was as good as new, as always. Summoning it and dismissing it was always the easiest part of handling it, it felt natural at this point. Gojyo let his fingers glide over its metallic surface. He couldn't help his eyes from glancing at Goku's weapon before returning to his own. He knew he wasn't a particularly materialistic person, he didn't put much stock on things, on gifts. But he still felt a special connection to the weapon, not so much because it fit his fighting style (it really didn't), but because Hakkai had given it to him. 

“Hey,” he asked, wincing at his own stupid, fucking transparent jealousy, “is that stick part of your huge-ass demon powers or did Hakkai also enchanted it for you?”

“My powers are sealed, dumbass,” Goku reminded him, tapping his diadem for emphasis. “It was Sanzo who did the spell.”

Maybe it was the (stupid, fucking transparent) comfort that invaded him like a soothing, ocean wave licking the shore on a calm day, at learning that he was still the only one Hakkai had given a magical weapon to, but the fact was that he failed to register at first what he was seeing when Goku brought his attention to the golden band around his head. Because he hadn't noticed before, but there was something engraved in the metal, in the deep relief that was darker and less shiny than the rest of the crown. A familiar something. A magical symbol. The Elder Sign.

Gojyo swallowed. It was harder than he would have expected.

“Goku,” he asked, his voice less cocky and self-assure than usual, “are you a huge-ass demon or a huge-ass god of destruction?”

Goku shrugged, impatient to kick Gojyo's ass with his shiny new staff.

“Are they not the same shit?” he asked, adopting a fighting stance.

Gojyo actually had no reply to that, so he readied himself for battle and refused to think about it.


	29. Chapter 29

Used as he was to Hakkai being weird and doing strange things, Gojyo didn't think much of it when he got home one day to find him naked from the waist up and holding a knife.

“Hey,” Gojyo said, taking off his jacket.

Strangely enough, the first thing that caught his attention was Hakkai's deer-in-the-headlights expression. That gave him pause. Hakkai was never the deer in any kind of scenario. He was always, not so much the car as the fucking freight train. Then, he saw the blood.

“For fuck's--! Hakkai!” Gojyo dropped the jacket and ran to Hakkai's side, more alarmed than he had been in fucking ages. Because the blood wasn't a stain on the knife, it was a constant flow from Hakkai's abdomen.

“I'm okay,” Hakkai reassured him with a smile while Gojyo pressed his hands against the gash, looking around to see what he could use to compress the wound and staunch the bleeding. “That's... aah... probably unsanitary, without having washed your hands beforehand. When did you last wash your hands, Gojyo?”

“Hakkai...” Gojyo actually elongated the name, making it clear that Hakkai was testing his patience.

“I really am okay, Gojyo, and--” Hakkai's tone changed suddenly from conciliatory to dangerously firm, “you're not using that towel for this, Gojyo, it is _white_.”

A bit calmer at detecting Hakkai's honest lack of concern (which was not saying much, Hakkai's judgment was not to be trusted when discussing the matter of self-harm-- see incident with his eyeball again), Gojyo allowed himself the luxury to cast at him a glare full of reproach. He would have finished reaching for the towel just out of spite, but preferred to find out first what the fuck was going on.

“What the fuck is going on, Hakkai?”

Hakkai's face made a complicated thing.

“I think that the best way to describe our current predicament is to confess that I might have miscalculated a tiny, little bit.”

“You think?” Gojyo said, eyeing again all the blood running down from Hakkai's abdomen.

“I don't mean the wound, I mean the bleeding.” Hakkai frowned and ignored Gojyo's noise of disapproval, “and, of course, the time of your return.”

“Hakkai, you're not fixing it.”

“It's really nothing, see.”

With that, Hakkai convinced Gojyo's hands (by pulling firmly at them) to lift from the wound (which kept on happily bleeding, but Gojyo had to admit it was not an arterial pulse or anything, it was more spectacularly red than actually copious). There was a chunk of flesh missing, but it didn't reach the muscles, just the skin and the fat, if one could call fat that insignificant layer that Hakkai in human form had for insulation.

“Well, yeah, at least I'm not seeing your guts this time,” Gojyo admitted. He had been trying to be sarcastic, but Hakkai's smile told him that the comment had been taken at face value. Somehow, it worked, though. Hakkai's smile worked. Gojyo's frantic heartbeat had abated to normal levels and suddenly he found himself there, in the kitchen, holding hands tacky with blood with Hakkai, who was actually gazing at him with an intensity that was both thrilling and scary. Because Hakkai had no middle ground, either he felt nothing or too much. And Gojyo was aware at that moment, under the ugly lighting of the fluorescent tubes, thick walls muting the constant murmur of the sea, that it was the latter, that Hakkai's feelings for him ran deep, deeper than anybody had ever felt for him, deeper than most people ever got them for anyone or anything.

Suddenly, the air was so charged that Gojyo had trouble swallowing through a dry throat.

“It soaked your pants, man,” Gojyo whispered without breaking eye contact, because loaded moments compelled him to say something and he wasn't ready to address all those feelings right now. Or, probably, ever.

“Miscalculation,” Hakkai automatically repeated; a quiet, distracted murmur, because he was as trapped in the magnetic force that kept them gazing at each other as Gojyo was.

Gojyo fought to find some words. Any would do, really, at this point.

“I--”he started, but was interrupted when Hakkai gently pulled one of his hands out of Gojyo's grasp and put his fingers on Gojyo's lips. The blood had started to dry and apparently didn't smear enough for Hakkai's taste, because he dipped his fingers again in his wound and painted Gojyo's mouth with his blood.

_You're never appalled at what I do; at what I say_ , Hakkai marveled, bright eyes still fixed on Gojyo's.

“Red does look good on you,” he said aloud instead, because Gojyo would have disagreed with the former statement, considering himself appalled enough when Hakkai knew he was really not. Not in a way that mattered. “Always has.”

It was obvious that Gojyo was trying to find his words again. More specific words this time, which made it also a harder task. As a nervous gesture, not really thinking about the blood on his mouth, he licked his lips. Hakkai's eyes couldn't help being drawn to the movement. Gojyo blinked at the taste of blood and Hakkai's gaze went up again to his eyes. Gojyo looked maybe a bit bewildered, but not particularly bothered by the metallic taste. After some more struggle, Gojyo apparently decided to ditch the idea of communicating with words (it had never been his forte anyway), because he just suddenly pulled at the hand he was still holding and kissed Hakkai with what was probably the least amount of finesse he had shown since Hakkai had known him.

Hakkai found it delightful.

“Gojyo,” he said against bloody lips, just because he loved the sound of his name, not because he didn't already have all the attention Gojyo was able to pay. “Gojyo,” he interrupted the kisses to repeat, watching his hands mesh in the red of Gojyo's hair so that he could compare the color.

Gojyo just bit on his jaw and grabbed his ass, pressing Hakkai's pelvis against his. 'Delightful' wasn't enough to describe what Gojyo was. Any word would be too small, he realized. Hakkai suddenly empathised with Gojyo's earlier struggle.

“Gojyo,” Hakkai gasped for the last time in a while, preferring to devote his mouth to kissing while his hands reached for the button of Gojyo's pants.

* * *

Some time later, with Hakkai's fingers idly playing with his pubes, Gojyo finally found something to say.

“Can't believe we've fucked with your fucking stomach gaping open.”

“Yes, Gojyo.”

They had had sex on the floor. Luckily enough, Hakkai's hide had been for some reason at hand, and even if Gojyo would have cut his own hand off before reaching for it for this, he was okay with Hakkai being the one to drag it down with them. And that's where they were right now, on the fucking floor, half on top, half under the big sealskin that held most of Hakkai's selkie powers and, at the present moment, a not inconsiderable amount of his bodily fluids. Pretty much like the floor. And Gojyo thought he could spot some bloody handprints on the nearby cupboards, too.

“Shit, look at this mess... I'm not cleaning this up.”

“Yes, Gojyo.”

“Stop humouring me.”

“Yes, Gojyo,” Hakkai was so amused he was practically laughing at this point.

“You...” narrowing his eyes, Gojyo lunged and kissed Hakkai some more, because he could never resist Hakkai, because it was unthinkable to even try when Hakkai was looking so damn happy. “Let's stitch you up, you mad fucker. After your stunt today, I feel entitled to smoke in bed for the next month.”

“Yes, Gojyo,” Hakkai repeated, still in the brink of laughter, so both knew he actually meant 'no fucking way, Gojyo', but Gojyo said nothing, he just narrowed his eyes again and helped Hakkai to get up.


	30. Chapter 30

They hadn't really fit at first. They were too different. Gojyo had assumed that Hakkai had stayed because he had had nowhere else to go. He hadn't minded, he had liked the guy; Hakkai was different, was fucked up, he got the part of Gojyo's life that nobody else ever got. But it was still damn awkward when Gojyo was just a straightforward slob prone to vice and Hakkai was... well, Hakkai.

So, at some point, after Hakkai had cleaned the living areas of the lighthouse and left carefully wrapped food for Gojyo one time too many, Gojyo finally said something.

“Sorry I didn't eat what you left for me yesterday,” he said.

“No, it's okay,” Hakkai assured him, “it was boiled, it will keep.”

That... that was not how Gojyo had wanted the conversation to go.

“Just...” Gojyo said, “stop doing all that, I feel like a slave trader or something. You don't owe me a thing, just... stop making me feel like I'm the one in debt. I didn't even know I had a fucking vacuum cleaner.”

“You hadn't.”

“Well, yeah, that's my point.”

Hakkai had looked at him critically then.

“I'm the one who is indebted, I literally owe you my life; I sleep in your bed while you sleep on the couch,” he said, leaving delicately aside the fact that he hadn't wanted his life saved to begin with, so Gojyo hadn't really done him a favour, quite the opposite, “but that's not why I'm doing the housework. It's just... it's how I live.”

Gojyo had averted his gaze at that. It was most definitely not how he himself lived. They were too fucking different. 

“Just... stop,” Gojyo asked again.

“I can't stop.”

Okay, they were at an impasse.

“Let me fuck you, then.”

“What?”

The amazing thing was that it had been Hakkai the one to spout that shit, crude language and all. And with 'amazing' Gojyo actually meant 'preposterous'. Was he really suggesting...? 

Hakkai didn't repeat himself. He knew that Gojyo had heard him. He just looked at him with his intense green eyes. Gojyo couldn't always tell which one was fake.

“Ehm, I know I'm cheap and all that, but whoring myself for homemade food might be a bit over the line, even for me,” Gojyo said.

“It's truly fabulous homemade food, I'm an excellent cook.”

Gojyo blinked. After some seconds, he blinked again.

“Uh, alright, then,” he finally said.

Hakkai grinned, showing his teeth. Gojyo had to talk to him about that; someone had to tell Hakkai that it didn't really look reassuring.


	31. Chapter 31

_I've earned this today_ , Gojyo idly thought, face up, half resting on the sand, half leaning on Hakkai's enormous body, hand absentmindedly scratching the pelt that was closest to it.

Just because he was a right bastard with an extraordinary sixth sense for bad timing, Hakkai rolled over and Gojyo's head hit the sand. 

“Ouch!” 

It wasn't that the sand was a bad place to land, but the sudden movement made him tense the sore muscles of his arms and shoulders and that, Gojyo could have lived without. He hated delivery days.

“You...” Gojyo growled, narrowing his eyes.

Hakkai just lay there, belly up, looking at him with his weird nasal appendage awkwardly spilling from his face. When he was sure he had Gojyo's attention, his humongous body did what Gojyo could only describe as wiggling. He also called for good measure. Yep, still blood-curdling, even if he hadn't been particularly loud, considering.

If there had ever been someone Goyjo would have never, ever imagined asking for a belly rub, that was, without a doubt Hakkai. And still, here they were.

“You're an ugly son of a bitch and you don't fucking deserve me,” Gojyo said, lifting his sorry ass from the sand just enough to crawl to where Hakkai now lay. He tried to pat the sand from Hakkai's pelt and started scratching, carefully avoiding the missing chunk in his belly that, Gojyo couldn't help but notice, was getting full of sand. It would have annoyed the fuck out of Gojyo, but Hakkai didn't seem to mind. “Shit, you're massive.” 

Hakkai wiggled again and his elongated muzzle waved gracelessly at him. Gojyo hadn't been lying, he was fucking ugly. Fat, and brownish gray, and covered in scars, and with irregular teeth and bloodshot sclera. And his pelt wasn't even soft in some parts. And that nose, what the fuck was Nature thinking with that nose... But, in spite of that, there was something about him that Gojyo still liked. The delicacy of his whiskers.The clumsiness with which he moved on shore and the sleekness he showed at sea. The strength of his muscles. His strangely human-like fins, with all their little fingers ended in black nails. 

“Fuck it,” Gojyo said, before climbing Hakkai's body and lying down on top of him. “I'm tired too, you know.”

Hakkai called again and, ignoring him, Gojyo put his head against Hakkai's heart. His scratching was more like stroking now. Hakkai's underside was softer, at least so far down below his neck. He smelled like brine.

“Damned selkies,” mumbled Gojyo, mouth half smashed agains't Hakkai's pelt, “even knowing how you really look like I still find you beautiful.” 

Little by little, the caressing movement of Gojyo's hand slowed down to finally stop when he fell asleep lulled by Hakkai's unhurried heartbeat.


	32. Chapter 32

Lying on his side, Gojyo traced carefully the limits of Hakkai's new gash. Well, it wasn't a gash anymore, but it wasn't healing as well or as fast as it should, either. Hakkai didn't flinch or react in any way, he just followed with his eyes what Gojyo's fingers were doing on his belly.

“What the fuck were you doing, man?” Gojyo asked with a low drawl, as if resigned to not getting a sensible answer even if Hakkai managed to understand his words.

The night was calm enough that words carried easily inside their bedroom even with the relentless humming and whirring of the rotor upstairs, and Hakkai was fantastically adept at understanding Gojyo anyway, but he, of course, chose to deflect.

“Gojyo, do you trust me?”

“Hell, no,” Gojyo scoffed. He looked back at Hakkai's face when he replied and he kind of got trapped there once again. There was something about Hakkai's eyes, something that compelled him to keep on looking. “Okay, maybe a little bit,” he admitted, frowning. It was not that Hakkai's eyes were pretty. They were, but that was not it, Gojyo was sure. “Or more than a little bit. A medium size bit?” It was their strange intensity. Hakkai's eyes told a story of their own, an honest story and not the bullshit that sometimes his mouth spouted. “All right, yes, I do fucking trust you, but even I can tell it's a terrible idea, man, it's just that I can't help it.”

Hakkai's eyes just crinkled at that. 

“No, really,” Gojyo insisted because he hated talking about his own feelings and because he really wanted to know, “what was that, is it another magic shit you can't tell me about?”

Hakkai kissed him. Softly, on the lips. It was by all means chaste, no tongue involved, but there was something about the length of it, about the sweetness of the gesture that got to Gojyo, that always did when Hakkai decided to kiss him that way.

“Don't... don't do that,” Gojyo frowned when Hakkai pulled away. Not that he had gone very far, he was still very much in his face. “Don't use that to shut me up.”

Hakkai smiled, as if he hadn't just been chastised. It probably hadn't felt that way from his side of things. Hakkai was weird.

“Your trust or my kiss?”

“Don't use neither. Kiss me only when you want to kiss me.”

Letting the double negative pass, Hakkai put his fingers on the lips he had just kissed. His eyes fell to Gojyo's mouth, too, as if considering. Considering what, Gojyo could only guess.

“It wasn't that kind of magic,” Hakkai murmured, “it was not a sacrifice to any god and it wasn't a ritual to help us defeat the merpeople's queen or to keep the Sleeper in slumber. It was... I just did it for me.”

In Gojyo's humble opinion, that hadn't been a very informative answer. At all. But, well, it had been more than he had expected, really.

“And Gojyo,” Hakkai added, face so close that Gojyo could feel his breath against his skin, “I do always, always want to kiss you.” 

Coming from another person, it would have sounded cheesy. Terrible, even. Gojyo would have shuddered. Coming from Hakkai... okay, Gojyo shuddered too, but not in the same way. 

Carefully, nearly tentatively (which was beyong ridiculous at this point, but still), Gojyo returned Hakkai's kiss. Soft. Chaste. Heartfelt. And the thing was that Gojyo never kissed like that. He was confident in his attractiveness and in his skills as a lover; he was used to physical touch and to sex and to social interaction in a way that Hakkai wasn't and never would be. But Gojyo still didn't kiss to express deep affection because he had never learned how, because it was safer not to. The fact that he was willing to put himself on the line for Hakkai was nothing short of humbling. 

“Gojyo...” Hakkai sighed, hoping they would spend the night just like this, trading sweet kisses and innocent caresses back and forth, cocooned by the blankets and the ceaseless murmur of the sea.


	33. Chapter 33

Everything had been bound to go to shit sooner or later, Gojyo had known that. What he hadn't expected was _how_ it had all started to go to shit. Well, except for the rain. The rain, he could have more or less guessed.

And it was actually because of it that he had come home early that day, because the rain hadn't started violently, but now it was falling down with stubborn determination and the sky was gloomy and grey and the wind was starting to seriously blow and, well, Gojyo had better light the lamp. So he walked back to the lighthouse. Just in time to watch a figure knocking on his door. That was weird. It was a woman. That was even weirder, because she was most obviously not Yaone and there was no meeting scheduled for today anyway, and Gojyo was just a handful of steps away and ready to ask what had brought an unknown woman to his door in this awful weather when the door opened and all hell broke loose. Only, it didn't really break loose. There was no sound, no explosion, no earthquake or demons rising from the abyss or worlds ending or anything. There was nothing, just Hakkai answering the door and his face changing from pleasant courtesy to shock to heartbreak. Just like that. And that's how Gojyo knew. That even with no sound, no explosion, no earthquake and no demons rising from the abyss, the world was indeed ending anyway. Gojyo's world. Because Hakkai's eyes told exactly who that woman was. And that was actually louder than the stars falling or any number of trumpets could have been. And if there was something Gojyo knew, was that, if the end of the world was coming, he didn't want to be around to see it.

And so, without a word, Gojyo turned heel and started to walk away; not sure where to, but not particularly caring either, because any place would be better at the moment. He searched for a cigarette, but then he realized it would never light under that kind of rain. So he just kept walking. And he took a couple of steps more, maybe five, even six, away from everything that he didn't want to face right now, because he didn't want to be there when Hakkai spoke to her, and much less when Hakkai touched her, and he totally didn't want to be there when Hakkai took his hide and left and he was pretty sure they didn't want him to be there either, so leaving them alone was the best thing to do for everyone involved. It was at that moment that he strode onto a puddle and he hesitated, a gust of wind making his soaked hair whip against his cold face. Because it was raining, dammit, and it was becoming a fucking storm, and the fucking lamp had to be fucking lit and Hakkai couldn't be trusted, not usually and most definitely not right now, to give a fig about innocent people dying at sea, so Gojyo had to do his fucking job and, for that, he needed to be home and not drunk out of his skull at the bar, which is where he would actually like to be.

So he stopped. And closed his eyes. And gritted his teeth. And breathed. And then he turned again and climbed back up to the lighthouse and kind of saw throught his peripheral view, because he was keeping his eyes firmly on the ground, that the two figures at the door were still there, like frozen in time and in what most definitely had to be shock, because it certainly was for Gojyo, so he couldn't even begin to imagine what it was like for Hakkai. And as he came closer and closer still, he avoided looking at Hakkai's face and avoided looking at the woman's face because he didn't really want to know if she really looked like Hakkai or not. But the thing was that Hakkai's paralyzed body was blocking his way and Gojyo couldn't enter and he didn't really want to do this but he had to and, shit, why couldn't he just be at the bar, or already inside, or at the bottom of the lake where he had been born, or dead in a ditch somewhere, anywhere else but here and now.

“Ehm. Need to... Just...” Gojyo should have just pushed past him. That's what he would have done any other day. With anyone else. In any other situation. But he couldn't make himself touch Hakkai right now, not even to get inside and away. So he just asked. “Let me in,” he said, refusing to wince at the possible double meaning because he suspected that Hakkai, quick-witted Hakkai, perceptive and clever Hakkai, who always talked in riddles and meant a handful of different things everytime he opened his mouth, wouldn't be able to catch it anyway. Gojyo wouldn't even have thought of it himself if he wasn't so totally aware that he had also meant it that way. Hakkai most probably hadn't even caught the literal meaning, because he didn't budge. “Please,” Gojyo begged, on the brink of utter desperation.

Finally, finally, Hakkai stepped back and opened the door wider. Gojyo just fled upstairs as fast as he could, but unfortunately not before he could catch Hakkai's pained whisper.

“Kanan...”


	34. Chapter 34

Miserable and wet, but not as miserable and wet as to risk going down and dealing with whatever might be happening downstairs, Gojyo leaned on one of the windows of the lower level of the lantern room and brooded.

He would have killed for a smoke. One that wasn't soaked through and actually ignited, that is. And it wasn't even about the nicotine, it was about having something to do, something familiar and trusty, the soothing ritual of moving with a purpose and knowing what would happen when you did it as opposed to just letting this weird nervous energy gnaw at his insides without a way out. There was an old couch there, but he didn't feel like lying down. He preferred to stand. Well, to be honest, he'd prefer to... okay, no use thinking about that, what he preferred wasn't important anymore.

It was with a mix of dread and anticipation that he heard the footsteps climbing the stairs. On the one hand, he didn't want to listen to what Hakkai was going to tell him. On the other hand, well, it was Hakkai. Gojyo would always want him around. On the third hand (because with the amount of strange shit happening around his lighthouse, someone having three hands to ponder different stuff wasn't such a far-fetched notion), a tiny, stupid and ridiculous part of him was actually hoping against hope that Hakkai chose him instead of her. As if, but those tiny, stupid, ridiculous parts were always the hardest to shut up.

“I gave her the bed”, Hakkai quietly said when he finally arrived, leaving the laundry basket on the floor.

It wasn't exactly what Gojyo had expected, but Hakkai rarely did what was expected of him, not when it mattered. Okay, Gojyo thought, made sense that they wouldn't leave right away in this weather, right? Although selkies weren't especially troubled by storms, not that Gojyo knew. He could be mistaken, though; Hakkai was relentlessly intrigued by his nature as a kappa, but Gojyo had never shared that kind of curiosity. Hakkai was Hakkai and that was that.

So yeah, sure, if they were staying the night, it was the thing to do, Gojyo thought.

If Gojyo didn't say anything aloud, it wasn't because he was trying to be particularly difficult, it was just that Hakkai knew him and was aware without needing confirmation that Gojyo would agree with him on the sleeping arrangements. A part of Gojyo couldn't help but wonder if it was truly better this prolonging the agony of not knowing when Hakkai would go away from him.

“Do you want us to leave?” Hakkai asked, as quietly as before.

The question befuddled Gojyo at first. Hakkai was asking him...? But-- what he wanted didn't matter. What he actually, truly, really wanted was for this to not be happening at all. To turn back in time to a couple of days ago, with him lying on Hakkai's stupidly massive seal body while the afternoon sun kissed his skin. Or a month ago, with Hakkai's playful smile showing maybe too much teeth while he shaved Gojyo's beard in the bathroom. He would even take the other night with the blood and the fright, because there had also been sex on the stupid floor and the certainty that Hakkai wanted him. But well, that was not really possible, was it?

So, within his limited options, Gojyo decided that what he wanted was to not talk about it right now. Or ever. Or, even better, not to think about it. What he wanted was space. He needed time. He might always welcome Hakkai's presence, but that didn't mean he had the strength right now to face everthing that was about to happen. Maybe later, after he had had a drink and a smoke and a bit of time alone to grief and wallow in self-pity and accept shit (he was ace at accepting shit, but even he needed a breather sometimes to process it first). So, yeah, what he wanted was to not speak. And thus, he just kept silent, staring blindly at the turbulent sea, standing, wet and miserable, trying very hard not to breathe in case he made too brusque a movement and he shattered.

It was only when he heard the soft noises of Hakkai's shoes against the stone floor, beginning a respectful retreat towards the stairs, that he realized that Hakkai could interpret his silence as rejection and just leave tonight, and what's worse, he might do it _for him_ , as a kindness, and Gojyo wasn't ready to spend the rest of his life regretting not having risked it, not having made the effort and grabbed his last chance instead of crushing that tiny, stupid, ridiculous part of him that hoped against hope; spending the rest of his life without Hakkai and not knowing for sure if it would have changed anything if he had spoken up or not; having kept his mouth shut out of cowardice and maybe petty pride. That wasn't really who he was. So, still without turning, focusing very hard on the storm outside, he forcibly pushed the word through his gritted teeth.

“No.”

The footsteps paused. Gojyo was aware that Hakkai was looking at him, but he still kept his gaze fixed on the troubled sea outside. It had been hard enough to speak, Gojyo didn't think he could manage seeing Hakkai's face and still keep his shit together.

“All right,” Hakkai said, softly, understanding. Because nobody knew Gojyo better than him. Nobody got him or accepted him as he did. “Please, make use of the basket,” he added before resuming his way down.

Okay, now Gojyo sort of understood the thing about the laundry basket. It was rather obvious, if one stopped to think about it, but Gojyo hadn't had much mental space to think about laundry baskets in the last few minutes. But Hakkai had; of course, he had.

So, even if he was in that strange state of mind where suffering in wet clothes was deemed adequate self-flagellation to feed his pity-party, Gojyo still went to the basket because Hakkai knew him and Gojyo was sure to find more than a towel and a change of clothes in there. And, yes, of course, there amongst the towel and pants and sweatshirt and even clean socks and underwear, there was a new pack of Hi-Lites, a lighter, two bottles of beer (just two and just beer because there was a limit to the amount of self-destruction Hakkai was willing to enable on a bad night) and a fucking thermos that, Gojyo was sure, was full of tea. And not that Hakkai wasn't aware Gojyo didn't really like tea, but he was just Hakkai and couldn't help it. That made Gojyo smile and want to cry at the same time.

So much for keeping his shit together.

“Hakkai...” Gojyo whispered, a lone finger grazing the polished surface of the thermos.


	35. Chapter 35

Kanan called Hakkai Gonou. Gojyo hated the name as soon as he heard it. It didn't suit him. At all. Okay, maybe it suited him in his seal form. Which made no sense whatsoever because even as a mirounga Hakkai was still Hakkai. But-- okay, enough of that. The thing was that, after a whole week had passed, Gojyo decided that he was man enough to admit it: he didn't know what the fuck the three of them were doing. Nor how it had come to be. Just that Hakkai hadn't left, and that meant that Kanan hadn't left either, so now Gojyo was living with his lover, whom he couldn't touch anymore, and with his lover's lover, who didn't get to touch Hakkai either but got to call him 'Gonou', which was bad enough but not as bad as them fucking in Gojyo's bed. Gojyo could take a lot of shit (and he most probably would have been able to take that as well), but that would have really hurt.

For good or for bad, the world didn't stop turning for anybody, even if sometimes it would feel that way, so they entered a routine. Kanan took the bedroom, Hakkai took the living room and Gojyo the lower level of the lantern room. Hakkai frowned upon that because of the constant drafts that the vents for the lamp provided, but Gojyo had tried to tell him that he had lived in the streets before and the lantern room was a palace in comparison. Hakkai's frown deepened at that, so Gojyo changed tactics and told him that the heat of the lamp was enough to counter the cold of the wind and that, for fuck's sake, he was a fucking kappa, drafts were what he had for breakfast. Hakkai was a stubborn bastard, but the situation had him enough off-kilter that he complied and took the living room without further argument.

And, in the meanwhile, the meetings with the merepeople had been moved to Sanzo's lair, which was also usually the occasion in which Hakkai killed two birds with one stone and decided to do the shopping for the three of them. That meant leaving Gojyo and Kanan together in the lighthouse without the only thing that they had in common, which was Hakkai himself.

It was fucking awkward.

“Would you like some tea, Gojyo-san?”

Gojyo felt that he had been ambushed. He considered various possible replies.

'Fuck, no, I hate tea.'

'Shoving bamboo splinters under my nails would sound like a better plan at the mo, thank you anyway.'

'I think the only thing I feel like less than having tea is making small talk with you, gorgeous.'

Unfortunately, Kanan had already poured him a cup even before she had asked, so he put the beer he had come to the kitchen to get back in the fridge and decided on:

“Sure, thanks.”

Somehow, it was all Hakkai's fault, Gojyo was sure.

And that's how Gojyo found himself at his own kitchen table, fiddling with a teacup made of fine porcelain that he hadn't seen before (with its saucer. What the fuck. He had never understood saucers; they were only good for prolonging the agony of having to do the dishes afterwards. Where had that crockery come from?) and asking himself for the umpteenth time how the fuck had he managed to land in this situation.

Again, Gojyo pondered different options as topic for a conversation.

'So, you got kidnapped and raped and pregnant and committed suicide, yeah? Doing better these days?'

'So, for being dead, you don't look half bad.'

'So, is it common amongst selkies, this fucking your sibling thing?'

“Ehm, thank you for the tea,” is what he said instead, because it was not Kanan's fault that he was still bitter about what was going on. It wasn't as if he had much ground to judge anyway.

“It's the polite thing to do”, Kanan replied with a smile.

Gojyo tried very hard to smile back, he really did try, but he was sure it was a painful wince that he managed instead. Because he had just realized how fucking compatible Hakkai and Kanan were. Came from the same mold, really. Gojyo was the one who didn't fit. He hadn't wanted to admit it, but in this scenario, it was he who was the third wheel, it was he who was the obstacle. He took a sip of the fucking tea, not waiting for it to cool down enough not to scald his tongue.

“So, you're also weird as fuck,” was what he said before he could think.

Fortunately, Kanan was indeed like Hakkai and, instead of taking offence, she chuckled.

“Yes,” she said, her smile delighted with the subtlest air of naughtiness.

It really was the same as Hakkai's smile. Only, yeah, warmer. Without the edge. Without the strain. Hakkai smiled pretty much the same way Gojyo smoked, it was what he used to hold himself back, to keep himself in check. To play innocent. To pass as human. Kanan smiled as if she really wanted to smile. For a second, Gojyo wondered if she was actually so much kinder than Hakkai or if she was just far better than him at pretending she gave a fuck.

The moment passed and awkwardness rained down on them again.

“So, you're, uh...” Gojyo's voice trailed off as he desperately searched for a way to finish the sentence without putting his foot very far inside his mouth.

'alive, then?'

'the reason I found him with his intestines hanging out and waving at me?'

'here to wreck my life?'

“...Kanan, right?”

Kanan's smiled grew wider, the glint in her eyes more and more like Hakkai's when he was inwardly amused by Gojyo's verbal flailing.

“Yes,” she said.

Gojyo looked down at his cup. It was ridiculous how small the handle was. Who could have fingers tiny enough to pass them through the hole to grab the cup properly? Where those cups really his?

“Gojyo-san,” Kanan's soft voice interrupted his train of thought, “I am a female seal, I am...”

Gojyo's mind threw wild guesses when she paused.

'a fantastical creature of magical powers who steals hearts in her free time?'

'as deranged as Hakkai, with the same taste for danger and lack of scrupules when disemboweling enemies?'

'going to challenge you to a duel to fight over Hakkai's mating rights?'

When she actually finished the sentence, Gojyo realized his guesses hadn't actually been wild enough.

“...used to sharing.”

Not knowing how to reply to that, Gojyo gulped down his tea. It was still hot, but not scalding anymore.

“I am...” he finally started.

'a kappa, now that we are on the subject of our respective species?'

'not really used to _having_ , in general?'

'totally unequipped to hold this conversation and wishing I was somewhere else?'

“...ehm, not”.

Kanan looked fucking delighted. Like she was having the time of her life. Gojyo tried to wrap his mind around that idea because he honestly couldn't understand why it was that he was the only one hoping the damn awkwardness in the ambience set him on fire or something so that this torture would stop.

“Would you like some more tea, Gojyo-san?” she asked. The way she was trying to repress her smile instead of having to make an effort to keep it there, dancing on his lips, was what tipped Gojyo off.

“You're fucking with me,” Gojyo guessed. He was ready to bet she even knew he hated tea.

“Yes, Gojyo-san,” she admitted without the slightest hint of remorse, but also without the slightest hint of malice.

Shit, she wasn't only as weird as Hakkai, she was also the same kind of asshole.

“Okay,” Gojyo said, without knowing for sure what he was agreeing to. “Okay.”

Kanan's smile grew even warmer. She got up and walked to the fridge. She left a bottle of beer in front of Gojyo. Accepting the peace offering, Gojyo took out his lighter and used its butt to open the bottle. Kanan poured herself another cup of tea. They didn't talk after that, but for some reason, their silence wasn't so awkward anymore.


	36. Chapter 36

“Gojyo, I have a favour to ask,” Hakkai had said the morning after Kanan's return. “Whenever I'm not here, you have to promise me to protect Kanan at all times,” he had been putting on his shoes as he spoke, ready to leave, not doubting for a second that Gojyo would do as asked. Gojyo hadn't really understood how he could go out so easily, leaving Gojyo and Kanan together in the lighthouse, but well, he was Hakkai, he had a different concept of what was normal and what was not. “Please, don't leave her alone.”

“Ehm, sure, man.”

The resurrection of any evil god would be nothing compared to what Hakkai would do if anything happened to Kanan again, so it wasn't as if Gojyo had been able to refuse.


	37. Chapter 37

¨¨

“I thought you got off on dangerous situations,” Sanzo, the bastard, had sounded amused.

“Ha, ha, that's true.”

“It's different when it's not your own life you're gambling with, is it?”

Hakkai had said nothing.

“Don't worry, you're a selkie and they are merpeople. They probably think you hate his guts because he has your hide.”

“Kanan knows.”

“He's not a player, he's not important. He's nothing, you made sure of that. If he's not a target for them, he's not a target, no matter who knows what. They don't understand interspecies relationships, they might even think he's human, they won't have thought to make a command out of this. Don't lose focus.”

Hakkai had closed his eyes, then. It wasn't that Sanzo didn't get it, he was just ignoring what he considered superfluous. It was just what Sanzo did, who Sanzo was. It was what made him a good Sanzo, in spite of all his bad habits. He told truths even when people didn't want to hear them; especially when people didn't want to hear them. 

“Control what you can control. Flow with the rest. Time is getting closer.”

“Yes, Sanzo.”


	38. Chapter 38

Lying on the couch in what was now his room, hands behind his head, Gojyo reflected. The lamp was good to go for the rest of the night, but he was just unable to fall asleep with all the shit that was going on wreaking havoc in his head.

To be honest, Gojyo didn't know how serious Kanan had been with the remark about sharing. Chances were, she had just been shitting him. But it affected Hakkai, too, if Gojyo had understood correctly what she had been implying. And Gojyo very much doubted Kanan was taking Hakkai's feelings as a joke. 

He had been thinking about it for what felt like ages, but no matter how much he wondered, Gojyo just couldn't guess what Hakkai's stance in that possible scenario would be. But that was not the problem because Hakkai was able to make his own decisions. The problem was that Gojyo wasn't even sure what his own stance was in the matter. Well, he pretty much knew that he didn't particularly like the idea-- 'you got him Mondays and Wednesdays and I Tuesdays and Thursdays and the weekend is threesome time, right?'-- but he was ready to make a lot of sacrifices in exchange for Hakkai's happiness. This one didn't sound like such a big deal, considering. 

So he was still overthinking it instead of just taking action, which was how he more often than not liked doing things. And the thing was, that Gojyo didn't need to talk about things very often, but when he did, it was with Hakkai that he talked, which would be a pretty terrible idea in this particular case because he was one of the parties involved.

“Fuck it,” he said, getting up from the couch and starting his way down.

Because it wouldn't be the first time he asked Hakkai about momentous stuff before Gojyo himself had made up his own mind about it, after all.


	39. Chapter 39

From a very young age, Gojyo had learned to move without making a sound. It was a very hard habit to break, even at home-- especially at home-- because the reasons why he had acquired it were the kind that left a lingering impression, so the lessons had sank very deep, taking root and refusing to disappear when the circumstances hadn't made them necessary anymore.

That was probably why neither Kanan nor Hakkai noticed him when he reached the living room.

Gojyo's first instinct was to go back upstairs, because something about the scene made it clear that it was a private moment, not meant for his eyes. But for some reason he didn't, he just stood there, paralyzed, watching as Kanan got close to Hakkai's sleeping figure on the couch and softly, tenderly, she caressed his cheek.

Only, if Hakkai looked like he was sleeping like a normal person, then he wasn't sleeping at all. In a quick move that reminded Gojyo the attack of a snake, he caught Kanan's wrist and stopped her. It was fast, but not unkind. He opened his eyes and looked at Kanan. Gojyo couldn't read his expression from the distance, but he didn't really need to.

Hakkai visibly shifted his grip on Kanan's wrist and kissed her knuckles and her palm, as though to soften the blow of his rejection.

“Oh, Gonou, what a mess...” Kanan breathed.

“Yes,” he replied.

Okay, Gojyo was ready to leave now, he shouldn't have witnessed this to begin with, he just... fuck, Kanan was not exactly facing him, not full front, but now that Hakkai's eyes were open, the man would catch the movement if Gojyo tried to flee. Sight was not Hakkai's strongest sense, but he still reacted acutely to moving targets. Maybe Gojyo could wait it out and...

“You've changed,” Kanan said.

“...Yes,” Hakkai replied.

_The fuck am I doing here_ , Gojyo thought.

Kanan smiled. It was full of melancholy, worlds away from the amused, impish thing she had shown Gojyo during the conversation in the kitchen. Before Hakkai could stop her, she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.

“Change isn't always bad, Gonou,” she said, before gently breaking free of Hakkai's grip and walking back to the bedroom.

Hakkai closed his eyes again, maybe not to watch her go.

Okay, not the best moment to talk to Hakkai, then. Gojyo could try again tomorrow. Or the day after. Or something. It would probably be okay to go back upstairs now. Especially if the alternative was spending the whole night standing awkwardly where he was.

“You can come in now, Gojyo,” Hakkai said softly from the couch.

Ah, okay. Cool. Great.

“I didn't really mean to eavesdrop, you know, I just...” Gojyo started.

“I know.”

Hakkai was being also kind to him. Softer than usual. Strangely enough, more sincere, which was an odd way to look at it taking into account that Hakkai's hard edges were so intrinsically _him_. It was then, with Hakkai looking nothing short of defeated, that Gojyo kind of realized that he wasn't the only one who had it hard. He had been wallowing so deeply in self-pity and frustration that he hadn't stopped to think how all this must look like from Hakkai's perspective. And, at least, Gojyo wasn't trapped by any kind of debt to Sanzo or by contracts with higher powers to save the world from destruction and madness. Gojyo didn't have any choices to make. He could whine and wail at destiny for his fucked up life, but at least his fucked up life wasn't of his own making. Not to the extent Hakkai's was.

“Man...” Gojyo said. He left it at that, knowing Hakkai would understand what he meant. Hakkai always did. Hakkai claimed to lack empathy, but he was nonetheless extraordinarily good at getting the feel of a situation. He just happened not to care, most of the time.

Hakkai smiled in response, but it was a frail, brittle thing.

_Shit_ , Gojyo thought, _he's so damn beautiful..._

Because he was. Hakkai was fundamentally beautiful. When he was being an asshole and when he was courting death; when he was ruthlessly killing, when he was cooking dinner, when he was smiling politely with his worst, most fake smile, but also now, when he was bare to the bones and sad.

Gojyo sort of understood Kanan's impulse to stroke Hakkai's cheek. He felt the same urge now. But he refrained, because he didn't really want to know if Hakkai would stop him too or not. Also, it was not fair to Hakkai to make him decide if he should also catch his wrist. So Gojyo didn't reach out. But hell, he wanted to. He missed touching Hakkai.

“I don't know what to do,” Gojyo confessed. “Tell me how I can help.”

“Gojyo,” Hakkai's face did something complicated, “you--”

Maybe he wanted to repeat what he had said all those nights ago, that Gojyo was already helping by virtue of doing fuck all and feeling useless, and Gojyo could do that, he really could, but he didn't think it was really helping anymore, if it ever did, and he wasn't sure he could stand to the side and just chill there, while he witnessed Hakkai tearing himself to pieces in front of him.

“I know, but... Kanan suggested... okay, now's not a good moment to think about that, forget about it, but leaving all that aside, the thing is... the point is that we can take shit, Kanan and I. Not saying that you can't, just that...” Gojyo exhaled, like losing patience with himself. Hell, he hated this kind of talk, “you're not well, Hakkai, you're not... you don't laugh or joke or play dangerous games or touch any of us. You're... you're not happy.”

Okay, that was stupid. No one would be happy in this situation. Happy. What a childish word. Hakkai didn't need him to pressure him into cheerfulness right after the shit had just hit the fan in the most fantastic, spectacular way ever. It was not as if Gojyo was a party himself.

“Shit, forget I said anything, okay?” Gojyo said.

“Gojyo, it's... complicated,” Hakkai said, shifting and placing his forearm in front of his face, covering his eyes. If to block Gojyo's view or his own, Gojyo could only guess.  
  
“No shit, man.”

Hakkai chuckled at that, eyes still covered by his own arm. Gojyo grabbed the back of the couch, fingers sinking in the soft upholstery.

“Just...” Gojyo said, “I don't want to make it worse.”

At that, Hakkai's arm lifted.

“Never,” he said, looking serious.

Gojyo snorted softly at that. It was precisely that Hakkai meant it that made him smile. He nodded and started to go when Hakkai's hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. Gojyo paused.

Just like he had done with Kanan's, Hakkai brought Gojyo's hand to his lips and kissed first his knuckles and then his palm. Still with the slightest smile on his face, Gojyo allowed himself the liberty to touch Hakkai's cheek with his fingertips as he did so. Not wanting to abuse the priviledge, when Hakkai released his wrist Gojyo resumed his way towards the stairs.

“Good night, Gojyo,” Hakkai whispered.

“G'night, dude,” Gojyo replied without looking back.


	40. Chapter 40

Hakkai had had to think fast and work even faster that first day. It hadn't been an easy feat, under the circumstances.

_That is not_ _dead_ _which_ _can_ _eternal lie,_ he had quoted in his head as he had shoved everything in an empty box for the moment, _and with strange aeons_ _even death_ _may_ _die..._

The words made reference to something else, something much bigger, but they still had sprung to mind then, since they came from the same book and the meaning very much applied. At least, the rain had provided Hakkai with some precious minutes, allowing him to insist that Kanan took a bath. He had paused for a second, looking at the contents. Then, he had resolutely closed the lid.


	41. Chapter 41

“The queen doesn't trust Kougaiji-sama,” Yaone replied, “therefore, she doesn't trust us either. We know nothing about that.”

“Hn,” Sanzo said. Not that he had expected differently. He had only asked because Hakkai wasn't present and it looked like the perfect chance.

“A human woman, you said,” Dokugakuji asked.

“Not human,” Sanzo corrected, “a selkie. A seal.”

Yaone and Dokugakuji looked at each other, like checking if the other knew something they didn't, but they seemed to be in agreement. 

“The only human looking individual in court is Dr. Ni,” Dokugakuji growled.

“Hn.”

That didn't mean anything; as the merpeople themselves admitted, they were being purposefully kept in the dark. It was obvious the queen had a copy of the Necronomicon. Which meant she didn't need Sanzo's, and that's what intrigued him the most about the whole situation... why send Kanan, then? Because it was improbable (but never impossible) that there was a third player in the game, wasn't it?

“You mentioned your queen started dabbling in dark magic when this... Ni arrived,” Sanzo said. “But you said he's human.”

“He claims to be human,” Yaone explained, “and he looks like one but... he's powerful. Not that he does anything to show off, not exactly, it's his... he...” it took her a moment to find the right words, “he's not afraid. That's the thing. And yes, he's under the queen's protection, but Her Majesty is fickle, her favour changes with the currents and is a double edged sword at best; even her most loyal subjects are aware and wary of that. Dr. Ni is different, he doesn't care. I don't think he can feel fear, everything is a joke to him. He doesn't give the impression of acting on anyone's orders, even when obeying the queen he seems to be mocking her by choosing to do so, but he once called himself a 'merherald', if that makes any sense.”

Sanzo's eyes widened at that. No, not a merherald. A _mere_ herald. What a ridiculous word play. Fitting a ridiculous sense of humor.

“Yes,” he murmured, “yes, it does.” 

Both Yaone and Dokugakuji could see the change, even if they didn't know what it was about.

“What is it?” Dokugakuji asked.

“Why did you call me here today?” Sanzo replied instead.

The merpeople looked at each other again. Sanzo didn't know if they were aware of how often they did it. They were sickening.

“Even if we are not told much, there are signs that are impossible to ignore,” Dokugakuji said, “the main hall has been locked down, but you can hear chanting coming out of the doors night and day. Princess Lirin has been forbidden to go out of her quarters, officially for her own safety.”

Sanzo fished a pack of Marlboros out of his sleeve.

“Time's drawing near,” he drawled as he lit up, “you need to talk to your prince. He can't remain neutral.”

“The queen still holds Kougaiji-sama's mother as hostage,” Yaone said.

Sanzo exhaled the smoke. 

“He's going to have to choose between his already as-good-as-dead mother and the fate of the whole world,” he said, “and he'd better decide quick.”


	42. Chapter 42

In spite of Hakkai's disapproving frown at the risk of fire, they had been using the lower level of the lantern room as some kind of storage room-- which was why the old couch had ended up there-- so Gojyo didn't think too much of it when, beneath some blankets and Gojyo's old jodhpurs and blue vest, he found the books. 

Truth be told, Gojyo wasn't big on tidying up, but at some point he started to find it tiresome to have to go down everytime he needed fresh socks. It would be easier to clear some space in the old trunk buried under boxes by the couch to keep his clothes inside.

So, well, it kind of made sense that Hakkai had thought to store his forbidden books somewhere safe. The man always said they were dangerous and could drive you mad, he surely wouldn't want Kanan to stumble upon them and read them. In spite of her meek appearance, Gojyo was sure that Kanan was as damn unruly and stubborn as Hakkai was, she might not heed Hakkai's warnings the same way Gojyo did (not because Gojyo was scared, but because it really cost him nothing to keep Hakkai happy that way and he didn't really give a fuck about the mysteries of the Universe or some older-than-shit forgotten gods). 

So it was not the books, really. It was Hakkai's hide underneath them that sent cold, unpleasant fingers of unease down his spine. With surprisingly steady fingers, Gojyo stroked the slightly greasy pelt. Adrenaline made his heart beat harder, he could nearly hear his own pulse. Or maybe it was just the feeling of it in his chest, Gojyo couldn't tell. Hakkai had never hidden it before. Not in front of strangers, not in front of Sanzo, who knew what it was and what power it held, and not in front of Gojyo, who anybody with eyes on their faces and most of all Hakkai knew for a fact coveted the damn thing; not in front of the fucking merpeople, who were technically their enemies. But he had hidden it from Kanan. 

His eyes shifted again towards the books. One of them had a weird name, he knew. Well, all of them had weird names, but he remembered this one because Hakkai had laughed at the face Gojyo had made when Hakkai had pronounced it and he had then explained that it was Greek for... something about death. Something.... yeah, right, The Book of the Laws of the Dead, that was it. 

It was then when Gojyo realized that nobody had deigned to explain to him how come Kanan was very much alive, most probably in his kitchen, instead of very much dead, most probably at the bottom of the sea. It's not the kind of thing Hakkai might have overlooked back then, just going on a killing spree without checking first if she was truly a stiff or not. And that made him wonder, too, if Hakkai's plea not to leave Kanan off of his sight was actually meant for her protection or for theirs.

This sport of playing Gojyo for a fool that everybody seemed to enjoy so much was starting to get old real fast.

Gojyo slammed the lid of the trunk closed again, leaving his clothes and blankets scattered on the couch.

Fuck Hakkai and his fucking secrets.


	43. Chapter 43

Alone, at night, in the bedroom, Kanan lay curled on the bed. There were limitations to what she was and wasn't allowed to do, but those bounds worked both ways. She couldn't go against her orders but, at the same time, if there wasn't a explicit command or an indirect conflict of interests that forbade it, she was pretty much able to exert her free will. It was the only way to ensure she still acted like a person, after all. For Gonou to believe she was the real thing she had had to be the real thing, and they had known it. 

So, away from prying eyes, with the certainty that it wouldn't affect the course of events, Kanan let herself go and cried. Only, no tears came. She curled tighter and focused on her sorrow, not so much on everything that had happened as on everything that was about to pass, on what she was going to do, on Gonou, Gonou, Gonou, still sweet and violent and clever but wiser now, older, sadder, so out of her reach; on what his face would probably look like when he finally realized what she was and what she had come to do. She delved in all the things she thought and felt and that were burning her insides. Still, her eyes remained stubbornly dry and her chest in turmoil, ready to burst with an invisible pressure and no let out. It was then that she understood and something tore apart inside her when she did. She was allowed to weep, it was permitted, but she still couldn't because the dead don't cry.


	44. Chapter 44

The first thing he noticed was the perfect shape of the ashes the cigarette had left in the ashtray when it has burned completely out. It was like a real cigarette, only grey instead of white. And fragile. If Gojyo breathed its way, it would crumble and disintegrate. He knew because he had done that before.

“Gojyo, Gojyo!!”

No, that was wrong. The first thing he truly noticed was Hakkai calling his name. Because he sounded frantic, and Hakkai never sounded frantic, so that had called powerfully his attention.

“Gojyo!!”

The second– no, wait, it was the third, then– thing he noticed, was that the light had changed. And that Kanan was not sitting in front of him anymore. And...

“Gojyo!!”

“... Hakkai?”

He had been calm before, but Hakkai's anxiety was highly contagious and he was starting to feel freaked out, too. They made eye contact. Hakkai's eyes seemed to be jumping from the right to the left, like making sure Gojyo still looked like himself. Which was stupid, because what would he look like if not? So it was probably not that. Maybe he was checking him out? Still, be it what it may, there was something going on and Gojyo trusted Hakkai implicitly so, if the man looked and sounded that worried, then it was bound to be bad.

“I'm okay,” Gojyo said, just in case that was what had Hakkai's panties in a twist.

Hakkai's eyes were still jumping about on his face, but they seemed to lose a bit of focus after Gojyo's reassurance. 

Suddenly, Hakkai vaulted out of the kitchen. Gojyo heard his footsteps flying up the stairs. It was true that Gojyo was feeling fine, but it was still a tiny bit more difficult than usual to gather his thoughts. Had he been spacing out? It looked like it. For how long? The kitchen was definitely darker now, and Kanan... Kanan.

He jumped to his feet and and got away from the table just in time to watch Hakkai run down the stairs again.

“Don't go out of the lighthouse!!” Hakkai called before disappearing once again, this time downstairs.

“Hakkai!” Gojyo yelled back, not knowing for sure what he had meant to say. It was in vain anyway, the main door slammed closed shortly after. Feeling awake now, Gojyo ran up to the lantern room. Funny how he was supposed to be the messy one here, because it was most definitely not he who had pushed the boxes and the small oil barrels for emergencies out of the way, or who had left the trunk's lid up, leaving its mouth wide open, like the maul of a hungry monster, its contents scattered on the floor. Well, not all the contents. Just the blankets and the clothes. Sanzo's books and Hakkai's hide were missing. 

“Fuck!” Gojyo spat.

He went down again, fast, even if there was no hurry anymore. What was done was done. 

When he reached the living room, he stopped, looked around and carded a hand through his hair. He didn't know what to do; probably because no action he took would change anything. But damn if he was going to stay put like a good dog. The night was still a couple of hours away, he had some time before the lamp had to be lit. He took his jacket and went out.


	45. Chapter 45

Standing on the sand, wind mussing his hair with a hint of violence, Hakkai watched the waves. The call of the sea wasn't overpowering just yet, but he could definitely feel it. It was what had tipped him off at first. The invisible thread that bound him to what and who he was had stopped tugging in the direction of the lighthouse (of Gojyo) and started drawing him to the sea. Funny, how they had stolen the means for him to dive into the ocean to answer that call, but well, they probably already knew there were other ways for him to survive under the sea. Or maybe they didn't care. It was a bit unclear what they were exactly thinking, if they were thinking at all. 

He had already talked to Sanzo. The monk had barely refrained from smacking him with his harisen. Rightfully, because Hakkai had been an idiot.

Hakkai closed his eyes and inhaled. He loved the sea, he really did. But he didn't want to go back to it. Not just yet.

Well, nothing to be done. 

Turning his heel from the shore for the very last time (and it was quite the effort already), he walked back to the lighthouse. The lighthouse, as he had to think of it now, because he had lost the right to call it home. 

Somehow, he wished Sanzo hadn't held back and hit him, because he knew that Gojyo wouldn't.


	46. Chapter 46

When Gojyo arrived back home, Hakkai was sitting in the living room, waiting for him. Gojyo knew that didn't really bode well, but he still couldn't help the wave of relief that invaded him at seeing him there. Gojyo nodded in his direction and went up to light the lamp. After spending maybe ten minutes more than necessary in the lantern room, Gojyo was forced to admit he didn't really want to go down again. He knew what awaited him there, he knew what was going to happen. He didn't want that. He didn't want Hakkai to say goodbye and leave. So he stalled and, of all things, grazed his fingers against the thick walls. They were rough. No sense in investing in fine masonery for a room that was designed for work, not to live in. He didn't want Hakkai to say goodbye, but Gojyo didn't think he could stand the idea of going down and realize Hakkai had left for good and they hadn't even said each other's names to one another one last time. So he slammed his hand against the fucking rough wall and forced his feet to climb down the stairs.

“Gojyo,” Hakkai said when he saw him coming. He wasn't sitting anymore, but standing in the middle of the room. He hadn't packed or anything, because Hakkai didn't put stock in belongings, he, pretty much like Gojyo, only had, only needed himself.

When Gojyo walked closer, he saw Hakkai's brittle smile and he felt the urge, the utter need to turn heels and run back upstairs. Hakkai's smile fucking hurt. Gojyo inhaled and closed his eyes to stop himself from fleeing. 

“Gojyo,” Hakkai repeated, stepping closer, too. 

To be honest, Gojyo didn't entirely understood what the fuck was going on; Sanzo hadn't wanted to explain shit. Gojyo only knew that Kanan had taken Hakkai's hide and that Hakkai belonged to whomever owned his hide. But he couldn't be sure, with their history, if it was alright that it was Kanan who had it now or not. 

“Do you want to go?” Gojyo asked, because it was actually the important thing here.

Hakkai was considering lying about it, the bastard; Gojyo could read it clear as day in his face. That was an answer in itself, Gojyo thought.

“Gojyo,” Hakkai said once more, like his name contained worlds of information.

“Do you want to go?” Gojyo insisted.

Maybe Hakkai didn't want to lie to him, but he didn't want to speak the truth, either.

“You will die if you dive into the sea,” he said.

“Do you want to go?” Gojyo had never been more serious in his whole, fucking, godforsaken life.

Hakkai's smiled widened just before he closed the short distance that separated them and kissed him, softly but intensely, one of those strange tongueless kisses that seemed to last forever and mean something that Gojyo was still unable to comprehend for sure. 

“Goodbye, Gojyo,” he breathed when he pulled apart, brittle smile still firmly in place. 

And then, he left.

Gojyo didn't know how long he stood like an idiot in his fucking living room after that. Minutes. Hours. Ages. Not that it mattered, time was meaningless with Hakkai gone. He didn't know what to do, if going up, going out, hitting something or just stay still until everything stopped hurting so fucking much. 

“I told you not to kiss me like that just to shut me up, dammit,” he said to the room at large.


	47. Chapter 47

Hakkai watched the waves from the outside for the last time. He had come to love this beach; he considered it his own. The murmur of the sea wasn't soothing anymore, it was a beckoning. A command. Hakkai could never resent the ocean, but he could and did resent his nature. Maybe that was what had drawn him to Gojyo in the first place; the half-kappa didn't like what he himself was either, but he accepted it without bitterness, with a shrug, the same way he accepted Hakkai. Gojyo was always more interested in who people were in relation to him than in what people were according to birth.

Hakkai touched his belly through his shirt. He should undress, the clothes would only drag him down once wet, but part of his resentment showed as bouts of irrational defiance to what was sensible. He felt his newest scar under the fabric. It was still fresh and hurt when pressed down. That had also been an act of rebellion in a way, sentimental, useless gesture that it had been. But he had no regrets. The only things he was able to repent from were the ones that had never been under his control to begin with. The rest, his decisions, he considered justified. 

Hakkai summoned his magic and walked into the sea. He didn't look back.


	48. Chapter 48

“What the fuck do you want now,” Sanzo grumbled.

“You know damn well what I want,” Gojyo spat, pissed off at him and at the universe. Pissed off at Hakkai. “Enchant me. Bewitch me. Whatever you want to call it. I need your hocus-pocus to get into salt water.”

“No.”

“What do you mean 'no', you shitty monk?”

“'No' means 'no,” Sanzo made a point to enunciate slowly and clearly, “I knew you were stupid, but I had hoped that at least you understood monosyllables.”

Gojyo threw his punch even before he realized he was going to do it. But not before Sanzo knew, apparently, because in a fluid blurr of white robes, he dodged, drew, pushed his revolver against Gojyo's brow and cocked the hammer. 

“The only reason I'm not shooting your useless brains out this very moment,” he drawled, eyelids drooping, “is that Hakkai would be a total shit about it, and it annoys me when he's a total shit.”

Far more pissed off now than when he had arrived, angry enough to consider pushing the monk into pulling the trigger, Gojyo finally decided against it and just shoved Sanzo's arm away from his fucking face. 

He banged the door open and didn't bother to close it behind him when he left.


	49. Chapter 49

The best thing about Goku, Gojyo thought, was that he didn't try to make him talk. Gojyo wasn't looking for therapy. He didn't want kind, or rational, or solicitous right now. What he wanted was to beat the shit out of someone, someone tangible and physical and right there. Huge-ass god or not.

“Hey, Gojyo...” Okay, maybe Goku did try to make him talk, because he was a good kid and wanted to help and, apparently, making them talk was what you were supposed to do when people were troubled. 

“Is it possible to knock it off you?” Gojyo nipped all that shit in the bud.

“What?”

“The headband. Can I take it off if I hit it too hard?”

Goku paused at that, considering it. 

“...No,” Goku replied slowly, like unsure of how wise the decision he had just made was, “I mean, well, yes, you could, but I just won't let you.”

“Good.” Gojyo grinned, showing teeth. Then, he lunged.


	50. Chapter 50

There were advantages to being a pawn, Kanan thought. Pawns were tools. Useful when needed, easily discarded when not. But you don't really bother to destroy a tool, you just store it until the need for it arises again. That had been their first mistake: to keep her even after they had captured Gonou. 

And capture him they did, Kanan had not only been the maker of it, but also the witness. That had been their second mistake, to make her watch the fruits of her own betrayal. It had been hard. Nearly as hard as keeping a straight, impassive face when it happened. But she did, because she had a purpose of her own now and they mustn't know.

Their third mistake, their most fatal one, was to dismiss her without giving her new commands, new sets of rules to control her actions. They were so stupid Kanan could laugh. They had been so meticulous when they had brought her to consciousness again-- because it couldn't be called 'life', not really-- so careful in the wording of their instructions... but now that her mission had been accomplished, that first contract fulfilled, its terms didn't apply anymore. She was free. When they had ordered her to go back to her room, they hadn't specified for how long. They hadn't limited the command with conditions. Silly, silly fish. Taunting seals like there were no consequences.

Their fourth mistake had been forgetting to divest her of the spells they had armed her with. They had not only woken up a predator, they had tortured her soul and given her weapons. Really, some people just reaped what they sowed.

Kanan hadn't been prone to hate while she was alive, not in the way Gonou had been, his violence repressed but grazing the surface at times. But, well, some things could really change a person, and now Kanan was so thirsty for vengeance and rejoicing in her own hatred that she couldn't help grinning in the solitude of the small room they had assigned her. 

They really should have let her rest.


	51. Chapter 51

It was in the drawer he kept his packs of cigarettes and lighters in. Well, not him, not really; Gojyo didn't even understand the concept of buying spares, much less of keeping them all in a drawer. It was rather Hakkai who had come up with the idea and who possessed the unbeatable will to always place the things in there when he invariably decided to tidy up. Gojyo had just adapted because, much as it irritated him not finding his smokes and lighter where he had just left them, he thought it would be too petty of him to purposefully take them out of the drawer and leave them scattered around just to watch Hakkai climbing up the walls when he found them.

_The fuck is that_ , he thought at first.

It looked like a strip of leather, which didn't explain much, only... it looked... familar...

Gojyo touched it to confirm it. Yes, he would never, ever forget how it felt, that was definitely a piece of Hakkai's hide, a very soft part of it, but, how...? Why...? Wha--?

It came to him suddenly, chaotically, thoughts and realizations nudging each other in his head like the jumbled pieces of a puzzle, pieces that had no intention of falling into place but that did it nonetheless, only in a messy way that prevented him from focusing on any in particular but that allowed him to understand them all at the same time. Flashes of Hakkai's hide. Of him as a mirounga, the gash in his abdomen full of sand. The feeling of him, silkiest at the underbelly. Hakkai with a knife and a deer-in-the-headlights face, his hide conveniently at hand. Miscalculation, he had said. A strip of Hakkai's hide lying in his cigarettes' drawer, for him to find, put there recently, because it wasn't there the last time Gojyo had opened the drawer.

And the fucked up thing was that Hakkai hadn't explained shit, so Gojyo didn't know what the hell this all meant. He only knew that Hakkai's hide was part of him and it demanded not to be separated from his person. To the point that Hakkai had decided-- no, not really, it wasn't a matter of free will-- had felt compelled to heed its call and leave Gojyo for whomever had the hide in their possession now. Well, not all of the hide, apparently, because a small, tiny, insignificant piece of it was looking innocently at Gojyo (and it sucked as much at it as Hakkai did) from his fucking drawer.

Why would--? Just what the fuck was Hakkai thinking? Was he...?

Hakkai had said that he had done it for himself, that it hadn't been any kind of sacrifice required for a spell. That it had had nothing to do with the merpeople. But he had had to know that doing that would mean dividing his heart if the pieces of the hide were to be pulled asunder. Like they were now. It was condemning himself to never get rid of the longing to come back to Gojyo one day, small as the urge would be compared to the command of the main part. Tiny, but insidious; diminutive, but constantly there. The pebble in the shoe of Hakkai's heart. And that after Gojyo had been so fucking careful to never use Hakkai's own nature against him, to always ignore the hide lying around, to never tie Hakkai to him by unnatural means.

_Just, how fucking stupid can you be, man?_ he thought, angry.

And it wasn't that it didn't move him, because he knew Hakkai was trying to be... Gojyo didn't know exactly what... romantic? Selfless? But he was so fucking terrible at it that Gojyo would rather Hakkai just gave him a tacky card and bought him stupid flowers like a fucking normal person (and that was saying something, seeing that Gojyo didn't have any use for either) and leave all the grand gestures for the heroes of cheesy TV productions because, really, it was just not 'polite', as Hakkai would put it, to waste all of Gojyo's costly efforts to guard Hakkai's fucking freedom.

And so, Gojyo took the strip of pelt in his hand and slammed the drawer closed. He was going to dive into the ocean and shove it down Hakkai's throat if it were the last fucking thing he did in his blasted life.


	52. Chapter 52

Goku was giving him the eye, but Sanzo ignored him and kept on chain-smoking. He would be damned if he let the kid guilt him into cutting down. Or worse, into talking to the kappa.

“Sanzo...”

“Shut up.”

He could feel the stars getting into alignment. He couldn't pinpoint exactly when the right time would be, not even knowing the texts by heart-- they were all so fucking cryptic-- but he didn't need to: it resonated in his blood, he could practically hear the cogs turning, the songs of the celestial bodies falling in harmony with each other. It was going to be soon, very soon. And that was why it rankled so much that the damned merfools weren't answering his messages and, worse, that the only one of his companions who had seemed to have half a brain had turned out to be an idiot after all and had let himself be apprehended when Sanzo needed him the most. After the price Hakkai had paid in exchange for his power, after all their carefully laid plans, he had to go and leave himself vulnerable at the worst possible moment. And that knowing perfectly well what Kanan had become and why she had been sent to him. Of all the morons Sanzo had been cursed with, of all the fucking halfwits... he hadn't expected Hakkai to be the worst.

“Sanzo,” Goku sounded serious, but Sanzo didn't really give a fuck.

“I told you to shut up.”

And, in case that wasn't enough, there was the matter of that mysterious Ni. If, as it seemed, he was actually Nyarlathotep, the Herald of Azathoth, Sanzo had definitely bit off more than he could chew and they were all fucked sideways. Azathoth might not be the problem, it was as powerful as it was stupid, but Nyarlathotep... if the Herald was dead set on using the siren queen to awaken Cthulhu, there was fuck all Sanzo could do to stop him. This was too big for him, too big for Kanzeon Bosatsu, too big for all of them. It was useless, their fight. There was no way to stop the summoning if it was backed by the Outer Gods and not just the whim of a greedy mermaid. And when the Sleeper awoke, the world would perish and Goku--

“Sanzo.”

“One more word and I'll fucking shoot you.”

Goku's lips stretched in an unaccustomed half smile. Like finding Sanzo's threat cute. It pissed Sanzo the fuck off.

No, that was not a helpful line of thought and Sanzo refused to waste time in idle, fatalistic speculation. But the thing was that speculations were the only thing he had left when the channels of communication with R'lyeh had been severed; Sanzo didn't know what the situation down there was: if the rebels had finally convinced their prince to lead their revolution, how many others they might have managed to recruit in their uprising against the queen, or if the spark of rebellion had been discovered and forcefully snuffed. He didn't know if the queen had targeted Hakkai from the beginning because she knew who he was now, or if it had been just sheer luck that she had annulled Sanzo's best shot at containing Cthulhu in case the Sleeper woke up. No way to find out now. He didn't know shit. And he hated not knowing.

“Sanzo.”

Sanzo's nostrils flared in anger. Ready to snap, he was cut short when he felt Goku's hand gently grasping his wrist. Goku could whine, and jump, and run around and look at him with an intense adoration that made Sanzo feel weird and keep his distance, but he never touched him. 

“We have to go,” the kid said, as if he knew what he was talking about.

He didn't, Sanzo thought. As the stupid monkey that he was, Goku was totally oblivious to the fact that, were he to take him to R'lyeh, Sanzo would just be bringing him to his slaughter. He would sooner eat his own pistol.

Like reading his mind, Goku smiled.

“It doesn't matter where my body is, Sanzo,” he calmly explained. “If they complete the ritual, they will summon me, and if they do, the god sealed inside me will heed the call. You forget what I am, there's no hiding for me on this Earth. There can't be. At least going there we stand a chance, we can fight.”

Sanzo bit his tongue. He was not used to it and it took quite a bit of effort. He wanted to shout at Goku that he didn't understand, that they didn't stand a chance anyway, not without Hakkai, not against Nyarlathotep, much less against the Outer Gods the Herald was able to manipulate to take his side. That they were fucking doomed.

Goku looked at him with... Sanzo couldn't tell, tenderness? It was pissing him off more than the whining ever did.

“Whatever happens,” Goku said, “it will happen in R'lyeh. We have to go.”

Sanzo closed his eyes and took air, the foreign touch of Goku's hand strangely soothing.

Worse thing was, the stupid monkey was right. He could feel it. The knowledge had been coiling inside him for a while now, wrapped and hidden in layers of fear. Sanzo wanted to kill something.

“Tch,” he said instead.

Goku smiled again and released his wrist. Sanzo smacked him hard with his harisen. It seemed like the thing to do.

“Ouch! Hey!” Goku protested.

He felt strangely better after that. It sort of reminded him of who he was. He hadn't been doing his job, he hadn't been killing the Buddha. There was no grand design, much less a preordained, certain doom, no matter what the prophecies said. There were only choices and consequences. So he would do what he had to do and hope for the best, that Hakkai and the resistance were alive and kicking instead of dead and feeding the fish; that they weren't all rushing to their own destruction, madness and death. 

He would walk his own path, knowing that what path that was was far more important than where it was supposed to lead. It wasn't as if sitting on his ass was an acceptable alternative. 

Sanzo ignored Goku's approving gaze-- how he could be so damn annoying, always knowing what Sanzo was thinking, was a fucking mystery-- and tried to contact the Kougaiji-tachi one more time.


	53. Chapter 53

The door clicked softly when Kanan returned to her room. If she could still breathe, she would have sighed in relief at not having been caught for another day. Back against the door, eyes fixed on a ceiling she wasn't really seeing, she went through her plans again, making small adjustments according to the intel she had managed to gather these past days.

The trick, Kanan was quick to discover, was acting like she had a purpose, one dictated by the queen. The guards now knew who she was, most people at the palace did; not that there was a big influx of staff, but it was still impossible to commit to memory the guards' posts and the general, extremely confusing floor plans without being spotted at least once or twice. She was very notorious, after all. However, as long as she steered clear of the higher-ups and appeared focused but meek, a bit like a robot, no one would look at her twice. She was an abomination, after all. People, even of the merkind, would rather pretend she didn't exist, just like they pretended their queen hadn't lost her way, their nights weren't plagued by nightmares or their numbers weren't steadily decreasing. Denial was a mechanism to cling to dying hopes common to all sentient creatures. Which suited Kanan just fine.

She hadn't dared to go close to the dungeons to check, but she had heard a couple of guards talking about Gonou, so Kanan was convinced that he was still alive. He had to be. He _must_. It made no sense for the queen to go to such great lengths to capture him alive just to randomly kill him in a random day for a random reason, did it? Not that most of the queen's actions looked anything but random in Kanan's eyes, but... no. Kanan didn't want to consider the possibility. All her plans depended on Gonou being alive. Or, rather, nothing mattered if he wasn't. Nothing at all. So she chose to believe his heart was still beating. Now her biggest fear was that he was part of the sacrifice that would take place at the end of tomorrow's ritual; she knew for a fact that one was necessary for the summoning to work, or for the resurrection, or for whatever the queen was intending to happen that cursed night. That meant that Kanan had to think very carefully about her timing: she would have to wait until most of the inhabitants of the palace were gathered in the hall, but not long enough that Gonou's friends and allies didn't have the time to act before the blood required to seal the pact was shed.

Kanan gritted her teeth.

Everything depended on so many things, so many unknown factors that were out of her control...

...And she was so, so alone...

Kanan closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on the texture of the rotten wood of the door under her fingers, under her back. 

For good or for bad, everything would be over tomorrow. She could hold herself together until then.


	54. Chapter 54

Gojyo looked at the waves, inhaling through the cigarette hanging on his lips without taking his hands out of his pockets. It was fucking cold today.

Hakkai had better be proud of him. Gojyo had managed to stay mostly sober, out of any bar brawl and away from the ocean. Well, not really away, but out of the salt water at the very least. Gojyo was actually itching to tell him so that Hakkai would give him his most condescending smile and a pat on the head (as if Hakkai were taller than him-- he fucking wasn't), congratulating him for managing to not self-destruct in his absence. But well, that was it, wasn't it? Hakkai wasn't here to be an asshole to him. Of all the fucking things to miss about the bastard...

He had been right, though; Hakkai, that is. Kappas couldn't dive into the sea, he would die if he tried to go after Hakkai on his own; and that would help absolutely no one, least of all Hakkai, who didn't care much about anything but who sucked donkey balls at dealing with losing the very few things he might give a shit about. 

Keeping himself alive and out of trouble was not good enough, though. He needed to go after him. Tomorrow, after he had prepared everything for the night, he would bite the bullet and go to Sanzo again. Gojyo was not above either begging him or smashing his fucking face to get what he wanted. If not, he would ask to get in touch with his brother. If Jien had managed to do it, Gojyo could too, no matter the price.

The consumed cigarette was about to burn his lips, so he took his hand out of his pocket to hold the stub as he took a last drag before throwing it away. That brought his attention to the strip of hide tied around his wrist in the guise of a bracelet. Not the most subtle solution, but he just didn't want to leave it around so that it would get lost. Well, that or he was just a sentimental fool, all right. Didn't matter, no one was here to tease him about it or to keep silent and repress knowing smiles. Not yet. But he would fucking be.


	55. Chapter 55

He shouldn't have eaten that lobster. Shellfood was always tricky and he had known it wasn't particularly fresh. But, shit, he had been hungry. He was always hungry these days and he wasn't the only one.

“Hey, Zakuro, I'm going out for a while, okay?” he said.

Zakuro looked at him with wide eyes. The guy was quite the clown, putting on airs of being a great sorcerer and a master of the dark arts, but he was too naïve and soft-hearted to be anything else than a fucking idiot. Yao Zhi liked him, though, or at least tolerated him, which was more than he could say of the rest of the guards.

Another pang in his abdomen reminded him of what was really urgent right now.

“But--” Zakuro started.

“It's okay, I'll be back in a few,” he snapped impatiently. “Geeze, it's not like we're guarding the damned dungeons or anything, calm your tits. See you in a while.”

As he swam his way outside through the labyrinthine corridors of the palace, Yao Zhi couldn't help admitting, at least to himself, that he had been a bit of an asshole to Zakuro; but that was only because the guy (and, well, everybody else too, really), brought out the worst in him. Yao Zhi was not to blame if they always made him snap.

But, even though Yao Zhi had sneered at Zakuro's fretting, the fool had had a point. Things had been getting steadily weirder lately and this might not be the best moment to leave his post. But needs must, dammit. It was not his fault that he had seen himself forced to eat spoiled food-- it was that or nothing-- it was not his fault that everything was slowly going to hell. Yao Zhi didn't like it one bit, what was going on. He missed the times of Gyuu Maoh, before everything went to shit and they were put to sleep for 500 fucking years, supposedly as punishment for hunting too many humans... well, they were sirens, for fuck's sake, humans were their natural prey, what were they supposed to do?

So yeah, now the queen had ordered them to keep a low profile and become nothing more than myths and legends in the eyes of the landmen living on the coast. And he supposed true legends weren't real and needn't eat, but they did, dammit, they did, and with the Deep Ones culling the reserves of fish around the citadel and the ban on hunting humans, they were fucking hungry. Which didn't mean Yao Zhi actually believed the rumors that he had heard about what was happening to those who disappeared without a trace and to those who went crazy... It was one thing to eat shellfood gone bad, but eating other merpeople... Yao Zhi had to repress a shiver. It was fucked up, that's what it was. He refused to believe it. There were people who didn't know what to come up with for a bit of attention. That must be it. The truth (more predators around? Who knew) was probably too boring for them.

In any case, as if all of that wasn't enough, the rest of the queen's orders made no fucking sense either... wasn't tonight the ritual that would give them back their old glory, resurrecting the old king and reestablishing the dominance of the sirens above all the sea creatures, releasing them from their promise to keep to themselves? Well, if you asked Yao Zhi, it was stupid to place less guards in the perimeter instead of more. What need was there to have the bulk of them inside the hall? Where did she think the threats would be coming from? Was there actually a threat beside starvation, when the world at large thought they didn't even exist?

No, Yao Zhi didn't like the queen one bit, she was just a glorified concubine, greedy and stupid. But he would cut his own tongue before saying that aloud (lest she did it instead). He was loyal. But that didn't mean he couldn't scoff at her incompetence and her unwise decisions. Like bringing that sleazy man to the palace. Okay, he was not an ordinary human, seeing that he could breath underwater and stuff, but still. Humans were the enemy in the worst of cases and prey in the best. No need to deal with them. Nor with that other guy, the seal. A goddamned seal. Even Yao Zhi could tell that he was fucking dangerous; were it up to him, that selkie would have been killed on the spot. For not talking about the... what the fuck was she? A jiangshi?

Yao Zhi shook his head as he finally reached the gates. He had a bad feeling about today. Hopefully it would be just the food poisoning, what his guts were so insistently telling him about.


	56. Chapter 56

“ _...so funny, because we need the lungs to sing and lure the humans towards the reefs...”_

Memories frantically going around in her head, Kanan desperately held on for dear life.

“ _...the silly things won't hear us otherwise, neither will the birds...”_

Another blow landed on her. Eyes closed, she took it without making a sound. The water roared in her ears. At least she thought it was the water. Its caress on her hair contrasted starkly with the scrapes and hits, with the turbulent noise around her. The world tipped again. She stubbornly refused to loosen her grip.

“ _...but we actually breathe through our gills when we're under...”_

If her heart were still beating, it would be racing like a bolting horse right now. God, she couldn't have misunderstood, could she? Could she?

“ _...even if we still draw the water in with our diaphragms and use them for both sea-breathing and phonation...”_

Her back slammed the wall (the floor? The ceiling?), but she still didn't let go, her grip tighter than ever before, desperation fueling her when she wasn't even aware what was up and what was down anymore.

“ _...but the water has to go out through our necks, lungs are useless down here...”_

Kanan's thoughts kept on flailing in her head as the guard she had in a headlock buckled and twisted, trying to shake her off.

“ _...It's a damned pity that there are so many lighthouses now...”_

A whimper fought to get out of Kanan's throat; this couldn't be happening, the guy should have lost consciousness by now, fish or not, a brain without oxygen just blacked out, right? Right?!

“ _...back then, before the ban, it used to be really easy to cause a wreckage, a whole school could eat for weeks...”_

The whole conversation she had evesdropped on the previous week kept on ringing in loop in her head.

“ _...so funny, because we need the lungs to sing and lure the humans towards the reefs...”_

The guard's elbow hit her side hard, making her huff salt water, his claws searching blindly for her eyes. Kanan just hid her face between his nape and her arm and held on for the ride, biting back a curse, tightening her grip just a bit more, legs firmly wrapped around the merman's waist from behind, praying that she hadn't been wrong lest all be lost.

“ _...the silly things won't hear us otherwise, neither will the birds...”_

It had looked so simple back in the room... just bewitch the unsuspecting merfolk that she found alone and take care of the guards that served in couples by enchanting the first one and fighting the second. By choking them, since blood would travel through the water and alert the whole castle. She only had to block their gills and withstand the blows until they fell unconscious. Easy. She could do that, it was just pain and this dead body was far stronger than it used to be. Just holding on a bit more, just a bit more...

“ _...but we actually breathe through our gills when we're under...”_

Finally, after a small eternity, little by little, the guy started to lose steam. Kanan didn't particularly want to kill him, but she didn't know when it would be safe to release her hold on his neck. She waited and counted slowly to thirty after the guard had stopped moving. Then, slowly, cautiously, she let go. The guard stayed still.

_Gosh_ , she mouthed.

Kanan kept her eyes fixed on the guard for a couple of minutes more. She wasn't sure if he was still breathing or not. Maybe his thorax was moving? She thought so.

It had been easy in her head. She had rejoiced in her hatred and imagined herself killing and it had been... satisfying. But, apparently, reality was different and the fact that she was thirsty for vengeance didn't necessarily mean that she was thirsty for blood. It was not about killing all of them (although the queen... Kanan wouldn't mind seeing her disembowled). It was about destroying their plans and shredding their magic books and setting Gonou free. And resting, once and for all. But she couldn't afford to think about that now.

Maybe she should put a spell on the unconscious guard now that he was not on high alert... yes, that was probably a good idea. Otherwise he would sound the alarm when he woke up, of course she had to enchant him.

She rolled her right shoulder a couple of times, trying to release all the accumulated tension. It hurt, but not as much as her back did. The palace was made of stone.

Okay, now that she knew how long it took, she expected the next encounter to run more smoothly. Hopefully there wouldn't be any group gathering in the corridors; it would make no sense, everybody had already gathered in the hall for the ritual and even the number of guards had been fewer than the previous days, the distance between them larger. She would be fine. Kanan remembered being afraid, when she was alive. Being terrified at times, in pain, horrified, then resigned, then afraid again, at the end, but with another kind of fear: a new horror, one she couldn't face, which was why she had chosen her death instead. But now... now there wasn't space for terror in her heart anymore. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

Kanan's lips twisted in an ugly parody of a smile. Thankfully, there was no one there to see it.

No, no need to fear. The worst had already happened to her, after all.

After the brief respite, she set to work.


	57. Chapter 57

Contrary to popular belief, Gyokumen Koushu wasn't totally heartless. She had actually had the best interest of her people in mind when she had made the deal with the Herald of the Outer Gods. Not that she thought the good doctor was to be trusted, she didn't, but with due precautions, she would be a fool not to take the chance when the benefits so greatly surpassed the risks. That's what nobody ever understood: that it was hard to lead, that the decisions she took were not the whims everybody whispered behind her back they were. She had _hated_ banning the hunting of humans, most especially when her people was half-starved. But she had had no choice, not really. What had happened to Gyuu Maoh had just been a warning, a very explicit one. Gyokumen was cunning, she could pretend to comply. That's what had gotten her where she was, and that's what would get her people where they deserved, to the top of the food-chain again, to the supremacy and the power to do as they wished once more, to do what they had been born to do. To be themselves. She was determined to see to that.

So what if she had to make a few sacrifices, some of them more literal than others? What if they all had to? She was contributing more than most, after all; it was her own blood that she was required to spill today. Not from her own veins, but still, her blood. Hers and her dear king's, her husband's (if not in reality, at least in the minds of everyone of importance-- she had had to claim the crown in some way, after all, nobody had wanted a succession war). It was necessary for the resurrection, Ni had said, something that linked both the caster and the target of the spell, a fair price for both to pay. She had reasoned with herself that once Gyuu Maoh was back to life, they could try again. And then, Gyokumen would give him a worthy heir, a male, one far better than the one Rasetsunyo had spawned before Gyokumen had made the king see that she was a far superior lover to have than that stupid, weak-hearted whale. A better consort. A better everything. The king would claim Gyokumen had always been his official wife when he learned what she had done for him, for their race; and with the deal she had struck with the Herald, their reign over the seas would be undisputed while Cthulhu, once awoken, would rule over the land and the skies. And when that happened, the good times, times of prosperity and fortune, would come back, and all would be well.

Sitting on her throne, Gyokumen oversaw the preparations of the ritual. 

The altar had been brought in days ago, the markings on the floor around it engraved rather than painted. The Book of the Laws of the Dead was on its lectern, its magic protecting its pages from water damage. The curved dagger in its nook on the back side of the altar. Ni had assured her that he would let her know the exact moment the stars aligned so that their success would be pretty much guaranteed. Apparently, timing was important when waking up magically sealed deities. She had never really cared about the movement of the cosmos, to be honest, but it was a small concession to make, being patient for once.

In any case, he had told her it wouldn't be much longer, so she signaled for the rows of cultists to start chanting and ordered for the main sacrifice to be tied to the altar.

She felt a pang in her heart, watching that. She didn't like what she was about to do, but this was not the time to be weak. In a few hours, she would be the one to bring back the glory to the merfolk and damnation to all the creatures and lesser gods who had tried to subjugate and hunt and oppress and starve her people.

Oh, how they all were going to regret it... no one could stop her now.


	58. Chapter 58

Kanan turned the key in the lock of the cell. Her body couldn't bruise anymore, but it could still hurt and she had been abusing it lately. She was tired. 

_Soon_ , she promised to herself. _Soon..._

Trembling with nerves, with adrenaline, with anticipation, she finally got the door open.

She tried not to feel too disappointed when it wasn't Gonou that she found, but the rebel mermaid-- Kanan couldn't remember her name-- the sweet, polite one that had been plotting with Gonou's friends. She didn't look particularly sweet or polite right now, though; she was poised in what, for merpeople, passed as a fighting stance.

They watched each other warily for a second, eyes narrowed, limbs tensed, ready to snap.

“ Where is--” they asked at the same time.

“--Gonou?” finished Kanan.

“--Kougaiji-sama?” finished the mermaid.

They blinked.

Kanan went quickly through her options. She had been fine working alone until now, but time was running out and she needed allies.

“I am not your enemy today,” Kanan promised, deciding to take the risk, “your queen is. The ritual is tonight.”

The mermaid hadn't relaxed one bit, still ready for battle, eyeing Kanan with distrust.

“You're her pawn,” she accused.

“I could say the same of you,” Kanan reasoned, “but the thing is that she locked you up in a cell and the thing is that, against her orders, I'm setting you free. So maybe we're not what we are supposed to be, after all.”

It was not as if the mermaid had much to lose, really. Very few options looked less appetizing than rotting in a cell during the end of the world.

“Lead the way,” the mermaid finally said.


	59. Chapter 59

“Where is Gonou?” the woman anxiously asked the small group of rebels when all the cells were empty.

At this point, Dokugakuji couldn't be shocked anymore by... well, pretty much anything, so he declined to ask what the hell another human was doing strolling around their (very much underwater) palace and, what's more, releasing a bunch of political prisoners from their jail. Not that he was complaining, of course, but--

“Who is Gonou?” Kougaiji asked. He sounded serene and confident in the midst of all the chaos.

The fact that the prince had been imprisoned in the dungeons like a lowly commoner enraged Dokugakuji. He forced himself to turn his attention to the matter at hand, though; there would be time for outrage later.

The woman looked frazzled. Exhausted, yes, and strangely determined, but also nervous enough to start biting heads off in the next few minutes if she didn't get what (or rather, who) she had come here for. There was something odd about her... apparently, she had single-handedly managed to reduce all the guards posted to watch the dungeons but she still seemed uncomfortable in the presence of Kougaiji's men, keeping her distance from them, choosing the point in the corridor closer to the way out without being overt about it. It reminded Dokugakuji a bit of how Gojyo had been back when he was a child, the months before the end, when it had started to sink in that he had to be careful and aware of his surroundings. But that wasn't it, there was something else, something Dokugakuji couldn't totally put his finger on just yet...

In any case, the prince's voice seemed to have calmed her a bit, Dokugakuji noticed with a hint of pride, because that was the kind of presence Kougaiji had.

“Gonou... Gojyo's ehm... friend,” she said. “Hakkai, you call him. The selkie.”

The rebels, most trusted of Kou's men, looked at each other, confused. Of all the merfolk loyal to the prince, only Yaone and Dokugakuji had had deals with Sanzo on land and knew who Hakkai was. When they had been detained, the guy had been still in the lighthouse, Doku was sure. What would the selkie be doing here? Seals could hold their breath for a long time, but in the end, they needed air, not water. If he had been apprehended, like this woman suggested, chances were he had already drowned.

“He's not here,” Yaone said, her apologetic face reflecting very much Doku's thoughts,“I didn't know who it was you were searching for, earlier.” 

The woman's face twisted in distress again.

“Then he must be in the hall, the queen is probably going to use him as a sacrifice to seal the deal,” she said, ignoring the small crescendo of murmurs inside the group of rebels, “we have to stop her, you have to--”

“Miss,” Sen, the youngest of Kou's men interrupted, voice tinted slightly with distrust at being given instructions by what looked like a human, of all things, “not that we're not grateful for your help, but who are you?”

The woman looked surprised by the question, as if she had expected them to know her. She made an aborted gesture, like a minuscule shake of her head. Dokugakuji looked at Kou. The prince was always solemn and never showed himself anything less than self-assured, but still Doku had the impression that he actually knew who this young lady was. Everything seemed to be connected with twisted threads of fate. Kou didn't know Hakkai but knew the woman. Doku didn't know the woman but knew Hakkai. The woman knew Hakkai and, apparently, the queen, the prince and all of them, too. Maybe it would be a truly splendid idea if they all worked a bit on their communications skills.

“Who I am doesn't matter,” the woman frowned, “you've got to contact Sanzo and tell him that the ritual is tonight, that it's right now, he's got to hurry and--”

Then it dawned on him.

“You're the human Sanzo asked us about,” Dokugakuji said before he could stop himself, “the one the queen hid from us.”

The woman blinked at this new interruption.

“'Human' is inexact on many, many accounts, but yes, that's probably me,” she said with what she most probably thought was patience, reigning in her exasperation at not being able to convey the urgency she was feeling. She must have realized that she needed to explain herself to gain the rebels' trust if she wanted their cooperation. “I'm not sure about how it went, there are facts about your history I'm not privy to, but at some point your queen found a forbidden book of magic and she used it to... she is trying to use it now to... see, this is a book that can bend the Laws of the Dead. Can summon evil gods. Can bring people back to life. I... Your queen used me to... to frustrate your plans to oppose her. But she made a mistake and now it's my turn to tear her plans apart. But those plans have already been set into motion and there's no time, the ritual to wake up the Great Old One is taking place tonight, _now_ , and for that kind of spell to work, a sacrifice is needed, a blood sacrifice, the closer its relation to the aim and the caster the better, but it's also more effective the stronger the magic of the...”

Dokugakuji stopped listening when he glanced in the prince's general direction and had to do a double take. Kou's face was pale, his countenance changed. Something was wrong.

“You're mistaken,” the prince said, serious and pale under the bioluminiscent light of the dungeon's corridor, “your Gonou is not the sacrifice.”

All the eyes turned to Kougaiji. Doku wondered what it was that he knew and they didn't. The woman looked hopeful instead of desperate for the first time since Dokugakuji had laid eyes on her. And there was still this thing about her, something didn't fit...

“He's probably being held in solitary confinement,” Kougaiji added, “I'll explain to you where that is and how to get there as a token of gratitude for your help, but we can't accompany you; you're right, there's much to be done.”

They exchanged information for some more minutes and then the woman went away and Kougaiji started giving orders. It was then that Dokugakuji realized what had seemed strange about the woman: she had been anxious, frantic, but her rib cage hadn't shown the typical heaving of someone in distress; it only had moved when she had to talk. The woman, be it air or water, hadn't been breathing.


	60. Chapter 60

Before reaching Sanzo's place, Gojyo prepared his shakujou. Its shaft was cold but comforting in his hand, its weight familiar by now. It was quite the cumbersome item, to be honest, and a little bit ridiculous-looking to be carrying it around in a church-- he had received a couple of extremely odd looks and quite the wide berth-- but Gojyo didn't give a fuck. He knew that Goku would get in the way if Gojyo tried to threaten Sanzo and, honestly, today Gojyo wasn't in the mood to be told 'no'.

Gojyo was already raising his foot to kick the monk's door down when the aforementioned door opened as if reading his thoughts and prefering to duck the hit. 

“You're late,” Sanzo accused right before stalking past Gojyo, the monkey on his heels.

“Wait, what?” Gojyo's brain tried to process and tragically failed. “Wha-- Where are you going?” He called after them.

“To have our manicure done, where do you think, moron?” Sanzo replied without turning, expecting, as always, to be followed. “To the sea!”

“You...” Gojyo gritted his teeth. Even when Sanzo gave him what he wanted Gojyo still felt the irresistible impulse to wring his fucking neck. _One day_ , he promised himsef as he started trotting after the pair, _one day_.


	61. Chapter 61

Sanzo had a beautiful voice, Goku thought as the monk started chanting.

The sea was calm, as if ignorant (or uncaring) of what was about to happen in its depths. Goku didn't have the affinity for water that Hakkai and Gojyo seemed to share, but he still liked this beach very much. He had been happy here.

“...'Cause you won't turn me into a fucking mermaid, right?” Gojyo said when Sanzo's magic wrapped around him, “or worse, mess up and make me a frog or something...”

Without his voice faltering once, Sanzo rolled his eyes so hard-- just the tiniest fraction of purple showing-- that Goku became moderately afraid that they would get stuck that way. He had been told it could happen. 

“Your turn,” Sanzo told him when he was done.

Goku stepped closer and smiled up at Sanzo, his trust in the monk absolute. Sanzo stared back at him. Neither of them talked for a little while. 

“I don't feel any different,” they could hear Gojyo's voice in the distance; somehow it felt as though he was farther away than he really was, “you sure you did it right?”

Raising his hand, Sanzo started chanting. Goku closed his eyes and kept still while he felt Sanzo's power enveloping him, his hand finding its place on Goku's unruly head.

Goku couldn't really tell if it was a side-effect of the spell or just how he tended to react to Sanzo in general, but he felt at peace when the magic started to work. It didn't take long-- or that was, at least, the impression he got-- the words foreign but the timbre familiar, the low vibration nearly cozy, welcome. He sensed the flow of power drying out even before the last word fell from Sanzo's lips.

Goku opened his eyes.

Strangely enough, even if the spell was done, Sanzo hadn't removed his hand from Goku's head. The monk was looking at him funny. Goku knew he was worried. Sanzo was not the best at expressing his feelings, but Goku could always tell. He smirked, cheeky.

Realizing he had been caught in what, for him, equalled a tender moment, Sanzo frowned and smacked him on the back of his head.

“Ouch! Sanzoooooo!” Goku whined, mainly because it was expected of him. 

“Tch.”

Sanzo made a quick work of casting the incantation upon himself and walked to the shore. The water looked cold and unappetazing and Sanzo made a face.

“His Highness afraid of wetting his delicate feet?” Gojyo mocked.

Sanzo rolled his eyes again. No, seriously, one day they really would get stuck that way and Goku would have a field day telling Sanzo 'I told you so'.

“Fuck” Sanzo mumbled, “I must be really desperate to bring Hakkai's stupid boytoy with me.”

“You don't have to be such a big asshole all the time, you know,” Gojyo sneered, “take a rest on Sundays or something."

“Hey!” Goku piped in, remembering a previous conversation with the kappa, “at least he's a nice asshole!”

“I'm not,” Sanzo deadpanned, not even irritated anymore. His eyes were focused again on the waves.

Gojyo and Goku looked at each other for a second before turning their attention back to Sanzo.

“You're not? What, an asshole?” Incredulity made Gojyo's pitch higher than accustomed.

Sanzo looked at him as if he were stupid. 

“Nice.”

Gojyo looked back at Goku with raised eyebrows and a big grin like saying 'see?'. Goku grinned back, happy with their bickering, confident that everything would turn out all right in the end, his faith in Sanzo unmovable, as it always was. That seemed to ease Gojyo's nerves a little bit. The kappa had been quite a mess these past days. It was then that Goku noticed Sanzo looking at him, too. Goku's grin grew wider when he directed it at the monk. It also worked on him, apparently; not that he seemed any different, but something told Goku that Sanzo was a tiny, little bit less worried than he had been before, too. Goku was ready to bet Sanzo would rather walk barefoot on burning coals than admitting that aloud, though. 

“Let's go,” Sanzo said.


	62. Chapter 62

As he swam back to the palace, Yao Zhi remembered.

It had been strange, that day. Most of the Guard had been alerted, but he had missed some faces in the detachment, and important faces at that. It was usually the prince who led the men when the queen in person issued an order, but neither Kougaiji nor the hottie that usually followed him around were there. He was sure; there's no way Yao Zhi would have missed those boobs. Only later did he learn that they had been accused of treason, and Yao Zhi couldn't help thinking that the timing was no coincidence, that it had all been that seal's fault.

Because that was what they had been ordered to do that day, to subdue the selkie, to bring him down and imprison him. Only, the seal hadn't been in seal form. And he hadn't resisted. So they hadn't really 'brought him down' as much as escorted him to the palace (the palace! Of all the fucking stupid ideas...!). Maybe he was also a jiangshi, like that creepy chick looking on with an impassive face as he was surrounded and led to the citadel.

He was bad news, Yao Zhi had known. He had heard things. The selkie was a mass murderer, a killer, a heartless beast. A psychopath. A conspirator against the merfolk, full of hatred and cowardice. A powerful enemy. And he certainly reeked of power, because a selkie in human form wasn't supposed to be able to survive underwater for long. As the guy had swum past him, Yaoi Zhi had seen a golden glimmer in one of his eyes, the other one green. You couldn't trust a creature with uneven eyes, even little fries knew that they were evil.

So yeah, that seal was dangerous and an ill omen. He should never have been brought to their city. If it depended on Yao Zhi...

“Yo,” he nodded to the guards at the gates.

The guards ignored his ass. That pissed him off. He grumbled about what big assholes they were and wished the queen got wind of them spacing out while on watch. What the hell, when all the messes going on calmed the fuck down, he would report them himself. Fuckers.

Strangely comforted by the thought, Yao Zhi swam back to his post.


	63. Chapter 63

Not that he was complaining but, truth be told, Hakkai didn't understand why he was still alive. Either they didn't know who-- and what-- he was, and they were underestimating the threat he posed, ot they did know and they were keeping him in the hope of using him. Use him how and what for, of that Hakkai couldn't be certain. He had his suspicious, though; the Necronomicon had given him an inkling of what could be achieved with the shedding of blood that was powerful enough, but it all seemed too convoluted. Merfolk were usually much more straight-forward than this.

More out of routine than of true hope, Hakkai checked his bonds again. They were magical bindings with ugly-looking glyphs inscribed on them. They contained his power, his channel of communication with Kthanid, but they didn't restrict the magic that allowed him to breath water, neither did they reduce his longing for his hide; they didn't mute its call in the slightest. Seemingly, they only forbid new spells to be cast. That in itself was another mystery: this was extremely sophisticated magic. Merpeople's natural power was in their voices and their shape-shifting, this was far beyond their abilities. The books he had studied contained some restraining sorcery, but not this fine-tuned, not this selective.

He wished he had paid more attention when he had been shackled, they had just looked like regular chains to him at the time and he had been... well, not at his best. Kanan's dead stare could fool the merfolk, but Hakkai knew her, knew her well. She had been suffering, she had been _her_. And they had dared to made her a puppet, to force her to sell him out, they had made her turn against everything she believed in and held dear, they-- oh, how they were all going to regret it, he was going to--

CLANG.

The burning wrath gave him an extra boost, but still the bonds didn't budge, only chafed his wrists.

It was worse, Hakkai thought, sitting against the wall, looking up at the stone ceiling; worse not being allowed to kill and shred them all to pieces-- ha, he barely had the slack to stand. Not that it had really helped the first time around, the mindless bloodshed, but now he didn't even have that outlet and it was fucking killing him inside. 

Hakkai closed his eyes and breathed. Even with no access to Kthanid's power or to his presence, he still tried to remember his peaceful aura, the calm he projected and that had imbued Hakkai when he had first contacted him. Forcing himself to stop fighting his chains, Hakkai remembered.


	64. Chapter 64

As he swam down, Gojyo felt a pang of alarm when he suddenly remembered that he had left the lamp unattended and the ships were going to be fucked if it went out and there was no one there to fix it.

Then the semi-hysterical realization hit him that, if they didn't stop the ritual, the ships, along with everyone else, were going to be fucked anyway.

* * *

As he swam down, Sanzo, whose default setting was 'annoyed' in the best of circumstances, was one breaststroke away from gunning down his own fucking robes. The impractical shits were getting on his last nerve.

Next time the world was ending, he thought as he fought to overcome the water resistance, he demanded it happened on fucking land, where he could at least have the goddamned cigarette he fucking deserved for all his troubles.

* * *

As he sank down, Goku thought: _Shit, but I'm hungry._


	65. Chapter 65

In the end, it hadn't been his choice at all, Kougaiji thought as they rushed towards the residential wing of the palace.

There was no bitterness in that idea, though, it was more of a philosophical remark, if anything. For some reason, Kougaiji had trouble dwelling in the past. There was nothing to gain letting wounds fester. Even when he visited his mother he always thought of how to break her seal, of what would happen after she awoke. So it was not that he held any kind of grudge towards fate, it was just an objective assessment of the situation. Gyokumen Koushu had thrown him into jail before he could ponder if he needed to raise in arms against her or not; some of his men didn't even know why they had been imprisoned, even if Yaone and Doku had apparently been plotting and recruiting some of them for the longest time. Kougaiji was intending on talking to them seriously about it, in fact. But that would have to be later; if 'later' was still on the table, that is... because, if the most trusted of his people (his most trusted friends) were right-- and, deep down, he knew they were-- tonight's ritual would destroy the world if they didn't manage to stop it. 

So, not a choice anymore. Even less after what that jiangshi had said about the sacrifice. She should know, she had had first experience with that kind of magic, after all. And Kou considered himself a good judge of character: that woman, jiangshi or not, hadn't been lying. 

They turned another corner, they were nearly there.

Behind him, Dokugakuji and Yaone talked in a low murmur.

“You knew that woman,” Doku was saying, “you knew who she was.”

“Guarding the dungeon is a boring task, especially when all the prisoners are colleagues and friends, unlikely to riot. The guards talked a lot to me. They were really nice and friendly. It was actually hard to accept I needed to fight them in order to escape.”

“Oh, really,” Dokugakuji's voice said exactly what he thought of that. Yaone was, after all, very beautiful, “they were not particularly talkative to me.”

“Were they not?” Yaone sounded sincerely puzzled, but Kougaiji couldn't pay too much attention now because they had reached Lirin's rooms. Kougaiji's heart pounded strongly inside his chest, the blood rushing to his ears when he took a look. “Maybe they felt intimidated; you're too serious, Dokugakuji, people usually--”

“She's not here,” Kougaiji said.

Lirin's rooms were empty. 

That shouldn't have been so surprising, everybody was gathered in the hall; they hadn't seen a single soul that wasn't a guard spacing out, staring at nothing. Even if Lirin had been forbidden to go out of her rooms the week before, she would have been required to attend the ritual tonight, Gyokumen would have even provided an escort for her, knowing that Lirin was not the kind of princess who meekly obeyed orders and stayed put (Kougaiji was witness, oh, for the northern currents, he certainly could attest to that...).

But Kougaiji knew that wasn't it. He had wanted his sister to be in her rooms, safe from her mothers' plans, he had wanted to keep that last hope alive. Now he knew he had lost precious time even when he had known, he _had known_ the moment he had heard about blood being the price to pay for the ritual, whose blood it was that they were talking about. It only made sense, after the comments and pieces of conversation he had caught between Gyokumen Koushu and that strange doctor that pretended to be human. He. Had. Known. And now he risked being too late.

Kougaiji closed his eyes for a second. 

There weren't so many courses of action left, after all. Sanzo was on his way, his men were waking up the few guards that were still loyal to him and hadn't been found out and Lirin-- loud, obnoxious, arrogant, sweet, wonderful Lirin-- was running out of time.

He turned to look at those silly traitors that would do anything and everything for him. Dokugakuji and Yaone had sensed the change in the ambience and were also looking at him with serious, focused faces. Theirs was going to be to most improvised and shabby coup d'état in the history of merkind, possibly in the whole world. But Kougaiji would gladly hold the title of the sloppiest revolutionary ever if that meant they all lived to be mocked by future generations, that future generations were still to come. 

“Let's do this,” he said before starting to swim again, knowing that he would be followed.


	66. Chapter 66

At first, it didn't strike him as strange that the corridors were deserted. The ritual had probably started by now, everybody would be in the hall. And if the couple of guards he had come across in his way back to his post had seemed distracted and didn't nod back when he swam past them... well, they were all idiots, after all. 

That's why, even if something felt off, Yao Zhi didn't really suspect anything when he reached Zakuro and he wasn't greeted back. His partner was also quite the airhead and so many things were odd lately that one could say that 'weird' was becoming the new 'normal'. 

“Hey,” Yao Zhi insisted when, again, he got no reaction. “Hey! Zakuro! You, stupid!”

Zakuro didn't even look at him, empty eyes fixed on the apparently fascinanting opposite wall.

“Zakuro!” Yao Zhi was starting to worry. “Zakuro! Zakuro!!”

He shook his partner for good measure.

“Zakuro!”

He was about to slap him in the face when Zakuro blinked, first slowly, then faster, and looked at him with a particularly dumb expression, even more so than was usual for him.

“...What?” Zakuro managed.

Yao Zhi considered slapping him anyway. Surely it couldn't make it worse?

“The fuck is wrong with you, mate?” Yao Zhi hissed. “This is not the moment to take a fucking nap.”

“I...” Zakuro was still going at half speed and the urge to slap him multiplied. “I wasn't napping. I...”

“You what, asshole?” Yao Zhi shook him again instead of taking more drastic measures, because the last time he had hit another guard, the guard had punched him back and it hadn't been fun, so he kept his violent impulses in check. Even if he was pretty sure he could take Zakuro on. Moderately sure. Still, better not to risk it.

“There was... this chick...”

A chick? Really? That was what this moron had been daydreaming about?

“...the one... the one with legs,” Zakuro finished.

It took a couple of seconds to sink in, but when it did, all the blood drained from Yao Zhi's face. There was only one girl with legs in the palace. The jiangshi. It was the selkies, the fucking selkies...! Adrenaline coursed through his veins as his eyes moved unable to settle on anything, pretty much like his thoughts. Shit, he knew it, he had told everybody but nobody had wanted to listen! This... this was big, this was enormous... they were under fucking attack on the most important night, the night they were going all-in to regain their old power... of course the damned seals would plot to foil their plans, it was against their interests that the merpeople soared again and ruled the seas. And they were in the palace! No, what was worse, it was the sirens themselves who had brought them in!

“Fucking...”

Yao Zhi swore such a blue streak that even Zakuro, who was used to his foul mouth, raised both of his eyebrows in wonder. 

“Listen to me,” Yao Zhi said, eyes fixed on Zakuro's, hands still grabbing the guy's shoulders. “Our people need us. We have to... I think we're the only ones awake right now. The selkies want to stop the ritual and we have to--” to stop them? From stopping it? That sounded terrible. A hero's speech was smoother than that. But hey, no one here to record his exact words, he could think about it later, when he told the story of how he had saved the ritual and, by extension, the merfolk, pretty much on his own, “-- prevent that.”

Was that better? Yao Zhi wasn't sure.

In any case, Zakuro was looking at him with wide eyes. He got him.

“You've been put under a spell that I've just broken. I think the rest of the guards have, too. Only I was spared because I evaded their evil arts. It's the selkies, Zakuro, the fucking selkies. I knew they were bad news, I fucking knew it. We've got to act. I'm going to hunt them down, you tell the queen. Quick, time is running out, move, move!”

And with that, he sent Zakuro going. 

As he saw him swim away, Yao Zhi thought that it was fortunate that it was Zakuro and not he who was the one in charge of alerting he queen. She didn't always react well to bad news. But it was necessary that they were all forewarned, that they knew and were ready to fight; and then, after he was done, Yao Zhi would appear to present Gyokumen with the head of her enemies on a plate and everybody would see that it had been him saving the day, uncovering the selkies' ploy and single-handedly thwarting it. He would probably be promoted for his services and all. And he would be admired, looked up to. Taken seriously. Respected.

This was his chance, at last. He'd better not fuck up.


	67. Chapter 67

He had always had an uncanny resistance to chemical substances, but if he would have been able to get high on acid, Hakai had figured that it wouldn't have been much different than this.

The space had been open enough for Hakkai to reject the temptation to call it a cave, but the way the myriad crystal facets reflected the (actually nonexistent) light had reminded him powerfully of the interior of a geode. If geodes were constantly moving and changing shapes and if they could be big enough to hold the... being... that had lain in front of him. 

Hakkai would have said that it was of a very distinct colour, but he wouldn't have been able to name which colour that was. Not one to be found in the rainbow, that was a given and, well, with nothing to compare it to, it was really impossible to describe it. Hakkai had been aware that the colour had only been easy to understand in that moment, while he was able to see it. He had known that the memory of it wouldn't be so kind to this mind later, when he thought about it.

“I was expecting you,” the thing had said. Its voice had been very deep, very soothing. Hakkai had guessed that, behind all those tentacles there had had to be a mouth somewhere. Or, well, maybe not. The voice had resonated directly in his brain, after all. It had all been very disquieting and Hakkai had been sure that, had it been not for the peaceful aura the being had projected, he would have seriously been, as Gojyo would have put it, freaking out.

“Thank you for having me,” Hakkai had replied because, disquieted or not, he was nothing if not polite.

The thing's (...god's?) golden, pupilless eyes had looked amused. 

“Call me Kthanid,” the thing-- Kthanid had asked. Apparently, it could read minds. That would make communicating much easier, Hakkai had thought. The eyes had crinkled again. Hakkai had chosen to interpret that as a smile. Then, the entity had somehow become serious again. “What you are asking for has a steep price, earthling.”

“I know,” Hakkai had replied, equally solemn.

“Being what they call a selkie and not a human may have allowed you to summon me without dire consequences to your mind, but if you abuse your dealings with me and, most especially, were I to actually possess you, my presence might very well destroy your sanity. You must understand that.”

Hakkai had. But he had desperately needed the power. Sanzo's had been limited, Goku's was actually the problem rather than the solution and there was no one else they could turn to. Kthanid had been key in the banishment and binding of its brother the first time around, its help would be priceless. Hakkai would do what he had to do.

He had then for some reason thought of Gojyo. Sweet, kind, rough-looking Gojyo, snoring softly, sprawled on their bed, drooling on the pillow while Hakkai had gone upstairs to open a dimensional portal to make deals with ancient, extraterrestial gods. Gojyo didn't deserve to be left alone if worse came to worst. That would be Hakkai's only regret, to cause Gojyo that kind of pain. But he deserved dying even less. And Hakkai was selfish. He didn't want to be the last one standing. If they were all about to die, he'd very much rather be out of his mind, or better, dead, than watch the light in Gojyo's eyes go out.

“I do understand.”

Kthanid hadn't exactly shifted, its weird wings hadn't moved to accommodate its massive weight-- Hakkai doubted there was 'weight' per se in this dimension, gravity was surely a foreign concept here-- but Hakkai had still perceived some kind of... change.

“You also realize that I'm not a violent entity,” Kthanid had said, “I can't grant you boundless destructive power. You won't be able to defeat my brother that way.”

Hakkai had grinned cheerfully at that, eyes barely visible under his lids. 

“That's quite all right,” he had said. He had enough repressed violence and anger for the both of them, Hakkai was sure. Also, Sanzo would skin him alive, were Hakkai to kill Goku in his efforts to put Cthulhu back to sleep. 

Kthanid's eyes had been kind. Nearly compassionate.

“You've got your deal, selkie. I'll aid you.”

The god hadn't mentioned the price to Hakkai again. It hadn't been necessary. The pity in its golden eyes had been reminder enough.


	68. Chapter 68

Gojyo couldn't understand how his brother had willingly asked to be turned into something that could breathe that muck. Sea water tasted like shit.

“I can't understand how Jien willingly asked to be turned into something that could breathe this muck,” he complained aloud. His nose itched. From the inside. Urgh. “Tastes like shit.”

Sanzo gave him the eye, probably because Gojyo himself had willingly asked to be turned into something that could breathe that muck, but Sanzo was, apparently, feeling magnanimous and refused to point it out. 

“Okay, we're close enough,” the monk said, “let's do a quick check up.”

“What?” Goku asked, even louder than usual, “I hear you all muffled!”

Gojyo swam closer to the kid and, after almost tenderly grabbing his head, careful not to disturb the golden band around it, shook it like a bartender preparing a cocktail.

“The fuck are you doing, cockroach!” Goku yelled when he was released.

“Yawn, you fucker,” Gojyo directed, “you need water inside your ears. Hakkai says that the sound travels better through water, that it's the change from one shit to the other shit that makes it dull.”

“What?” 

Gojyo narrowed his eyes, unsure if Goku still had trouble hearing or if he had trouble understanding.

“Enough!” Sanzo butted in, not interested in a vague lecture on fluid dynamics, “check your weapons _now_ , we're running out of time as it is.”

The shakujou glowed into existence in Gojyo's hand, just as fast as it did on land. Gojyo tested the maneuverability using the shovel-like end to strike Goku's backside.

“Hey!” the monkey complained; he was starting to get tired of the abuse.

Gojyo tried to repress a smile, happy with the performance of his weapon. It moved nearly as fast as it did out of the water. Which was a good thing, because next he knew, he was parrying Goku's lightning fast nyoi-bo. Recovering from the shock, Gojyo grinned at the challenge. He was going to kick the kid's ass.

Apparently their magic weapons ignored the viscosity of the medium even if Gojyo's muscles told him that the effort required to move them was greater than usual. 

In the meanwhile, Sanzo battled with his robes, searching inside his sleeves. He actually envied the kappa, who had stripped to his jeans before plunging into the sea. Unfortunately, Sanzo was going to need his robes, the contents of its pockets and the sutra that rested on his shoulders. Not for the first time, he cursed his punishment and his dependence on artifacts to channel his power. And his robes, he also cursed his robes. Again. He just couldn't curse his fucking robes often enough. 

Finally, as the mock battle between Goku and Gojyo ground to a halt, Sanzo found and drew his revolver. 

“Hn.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” Gojyo laughed, “the gunpowder is surely soaked by now, Baldy, you're not going to be able to fir--”

A bullet whistling loudly past his ear shut him effectively up. Sanzo nodded to himself, satisfied.

“The fuck are you trying to--!” It wasn't so much Goku's arms hastily thrown around Gojyo's torso that stopped him from killing the fucking monk, as it was the angry bellowing that suddenly roared from behind him, the direction the bullet had flown in.

Slowly, the three turned towards the sound. The bottom of the ocean was dark, very dark, but amongst the shadows, gaining definition as it drew near, they could see a big-- no, not big-- a _huge_ figure rising and walking (or... hopping? The fuck?) towards them. Its steps were heavy, as if the hydrostatic buoyancy didn't apply to it. Or as if the creature was too heavy for buoyancy to make a difference. When it was close enough, they could see that it was pretty much the inverse of a siren, with the gigantic head and shape of a fish but with awkward looking legs and arms sticking out from its body. And, as they could confirm when it roared again, this time uncomfortably close to the trio, it also had what looked like one million thin, sharp, mean-looking teeth. 

“Oh, oh,” said Gojyo.

“Tch,” tsked Sanzo.

Goku just smiled a shit-eating grin and, releasing Gojyo, he readied his nyoi-bo.


	69. Chapter 69

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Creatures from Earth were absolutely fascinanting, Ni thought as he watched, amused, the beginning of the ritual; one had only to dangle a bit of power in their noses, a hint of what they truly desired, nothing more than a veiled promise, and they would roll over and waggle their tails (and sell their mothers) in the hope of grabbing it from your tempting fingers.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

From his place to the right of the queen, behind the altar, Nyarlathotep stood at a vantage point to observe the proceedings. In the front rows, the cultists chanted their verses again and again. Surrounding the altar and also scattered around the audience, a multitude of stands had been placed holding the bioluminiscent life forms that acted as lamps so many fathoms deep below the surface. Amongst the crowd gathered in the hall, floating in orderly rows behind the cultists, he could spot where the queen had posted her guards. It was cute that she thought they would make a difference; in fact, they would just help in adding to the chaos. Nyarlathotep loved the chaos.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

His experience with humans had always been very positive, but now he was delighted to confirm that all sentient creatures on this planet seemed to be as greedy, mean and desperate as mankind was. They were unfailingly ruled by their emotions, which was in itself quite the marvelous thing, seeing that they had such a wide range of them. Look at that silly mermaid, for example: she was going to willingly murder her own daughter in front of her people to get what she wanted. Not that Ni wouldn't do exactly the same in her place, after all he had impregnated her and she was going to die tonight, if everything went according to his plans-- and everything always went according to his plans-- but, in his defence, one could say that he wasn't supposed to be bound by strict morals and complicated social rules conceived to ensure the continued survival of his kind, unlike all these creatures.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Aah... no, the life of an Outer God was disgustingly simple in comparison, disgustingly, mind-numbingly boring. Manipulating Azathoth could be dangerous, but it wasn't really a challenge when the most powerful being of the entire universe was nothing more than a drooling mass of stupidity. Earthlings were, at least, smart, as well as complex. Beautiful, willful pawns for Ni to move and use at his convenience. Their actions wove a tapestry of events that not even Ni was able to predict in total detail.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Like that foolish guard that had escaped the jiangshi's spell. He was a factor Ni hadn't been able to take into account and, to be honest, he was dying to see what consequences that loose thread brought to the tapestry in the end. It wasn't so often that Ni encountered the unexpected, after all. Until now, no other single player had deviated from the path Ni had crafted for them: the queen had brought to life the selkie that had attracted Kthanid's avatar to the palace, avatar that Ni had ensured wasn't harmed and sat still like a good doggy waiting for the little monk to arrive, bringing both the sutra that Ni ultimately coveted and the embodiment of the planet where the Elder Gods had sealed the Great Old One that was, conversely, the bait he had dangled under the siren queen's greedy nose to make her do his bidding.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

So, yes, Nyarlathotep was actually having a blast, seeing how the complex dance he had orchestrated unfolded, following with clockwork precision the subtle cues of its director's hidden baton. He actually allowed himself to hum along with the melody, uncaring of how inexact the wording of the prayer was, weaving a harmony with the cultists' unrelenting chanting.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

_Mmm mnn, nn mmmm nnnnnh mmm hmmmnn..._

He definitely should come down to Earth more often.


	70. Chapter 70

The crescent didn't whistle when it flew through the water, but the chain still jingled as it was released from the shaft of the shakujou, its movement so fast that bubbles formed along the links.

The half moon missed and, ignoring Goku's heavier and slower form even though he was actually closer to the beast, the Deep One turned towards Gojyo.

 _Shit, shit, shit_ , he thought, as he spotted a huge scaled hand falling down on him.

Gojyo ducked forward and the monster's claws rushed through the space he had been occupying before. Gojyo gulped; it had come close enough that he had been able to appreciate the dirt stuck to the nails. That, in Gojyo's book, was way too near for comfort.

Something moved from the other direction.

Without thinking, Gojyo swam back with a backflip just in time to dodge the other set of claws swinging down on him.

“The fuck is wrong with you, bastard?” he yelled, dancing out of the claws' way again and again as the Deep One relentlessly attacked, “there's three of us! Three!”

The monster roared. At first, Gojyo thought it was in reply to his reproach, but then he saw Goku had just hit it hard on one of its knees. 

Taking the chance to draw back the half-moon blade, Gojyo sighed in relief, thinking he would get a respite from the monster's claws and that the thing would turn its attention towards Goku's more immediate attack. The next fast but clumsy right hook from the creature disabused him of the notion.

“No, seriously,” he complained, twisting out of its way, “really? Really?!”

A couple of gunshots could be heard and still the beast didn't slow down. 

Gojyo dodged another attack. 

Goku was still hitting the monster's legs, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

“Monkey!” Gojyo shouted, deflecting a filthy clawed hand with the shovel end of his weapon, “get its face, its face!”

Another shot rang. The Deep One roared; the shot must have hit home. It attacked.

“Shit,” Gojyo swam back again.

“Can't swim up fast enough!” Goku shouted back, “Can't reach it!”

“Come'ere!” Gojyo roared.

Ducking madly, Gojyo could see from the corner of his eye that Goku was, indeed, quite clumsy underwater. All the agility he showed on land and that granted him his nickname was lost under the sea. Maybe that was why the monster was fixated on Gojyo, since he looked like the only water creature swift enough to pose a threat. Because Sanzo sure as hell didn't, even if his robes weren't half bad at helping him impersonate a brainless jellyfish. Gojyo made a mental note to tease the monk about it later.

Goku was near enough now.

“Help me with those claws, monkey! Need a second!”

Goku, the gods bless him, didn't ask what the fuck he meant, he just kept the claws away with the nyoi-bo. Another shot rang. Its hands being blocked, its enemies together and bullets raining on it, the monster lowered its head to attack with its teeth.

Given the two second reprieve that he needed, Gojyo grinned and released the crescent. 

Bubbles trailed after the blade as it ploughed through the water. 

Overwhelmed, its face too close and its hands too busy, the Deep One couldn't duck and the half moon sank with a disgusting splat into one of its eyes.

“Goku! Now!” Gojyo shouted.

The beast roared loudly, angry and in pain, as dark blood muddied even more the already cloudy water, but Goku didn't need to see now, he just grabbed the chain that linked Gojyo's weapon to the monster's eye and climbed, like the monkey he was, up its links.

Distantly, Gojyo could hear some chanting, but he couldn't locate the source when the monster was swatting blindly, madly, trying to dislodge the piece of metal buried in its eye.

Goku reached the face of the Deep One and, summoning again his nyoi-bo, he swung it with all of his not inconsiderable strength against its teeth. Like stalagmites in a cave, they all broke with a crystalline sound. The Deep one roared again, its desperate cry loud enough to make the water vibrate. 

“Goku!” Gojyo shouted.

“Got it!” Goku replied and, as if reading Gojyo's mind, he jumped to the monster's fish head right at the moment the kappa pulled harshly and retracted the blade, just to release it again and circle the chain around the Deep One's wrists, preventing the monster from clawing at Goku. The monkey, having ducked the claws' first attack and seeing that another one was not coming, raised his nyoi-bo and let it fall with a big thud against the monster's head.

“Goku!”

That had been a lower pitch. It was Sanzo's voice. Only after they heard it did Gojyo realize that the chanting had stopped.

“Out of the way!” the monk ordered. 

“Right-o!”

And that was when Gojyo saw that Goku didn't swim down as much as he fell like a fucking rock towards the ocean's floor. Just... what? Gojyo had rough-housed with him for months and the kid wasn't really that heavy. Just--?

The shot that rang next was not like the previous ones, it was like a cannon, a deafening explosion that shook the bottom of the ocean like a tsunami.

Like a watermelon, the Deep One's head burst in one million pieces, sending flying pieces of brain, blood, fish skin, fish bone (and the gods only knew what more) as a frag grenade of organic matter. The big, headless body fell heavily to the floor. 

Gojyo coughed, the debris making the inside of his nose and throat smart. He could heard the monk coughing, too. He didn't sound too far away.

“You, asshole...” Gojyo complained between coughing fits, “you wanted to make us... all deaf... or what?”

Sanzo kept on coughing for a while.

“I'll let...” he coughed once more, “the next one... fucking kill you... if that's what you want.”

The waters weren't going to go back to normal for a while. They'd better continue their journey as soon as possible.

“Let's go,” Sanzo said, when the coughing became bearable, “Goku!”

“Here!” the kid shouted back. At some point, his silhouette started to appear from amongst the dirt. “I think I like it even better when we fight together rather than each other!” he said when he reached them. “We make an awesome team!”

Gojyo couldn't be sure, but he thought Goku was grinning. Gojyo ruffled the kid's hair, unbelievably fond of his cheerful, unbeatable, stupid ass. 

“Yeah”, Gojyo said, before starting to move, “that we do.”


	71. Chapter 71

Yao Zhi turned another corner. He might have gotten a little bit lost. It wasn't his fault, this wasn't his turf; the palace was kind of huge and labyrinthine and Yao Zhi had his usual post away from where he believed the isolation cells were.

He had fucking known they should have executed that seal guy. He. Had. Known. But did anybody listen? No, of course not, nobody paid any heed ever to what old Yao Zhi said even if he always knew he was right. Well, admittedly, it had been the queen the one who had given the order to let the selkie live, and you didn't disobey Gyokumen Koushu if you really knew what was best for you. So he could be lenient towards his mates. But still, what the hell, it was common sense that the seal had to die. He hadn't even fought back when they got him, that should have been the first clue.

Another corner. Yes, this was the way.

No, really, what had possessed the queen to--? 

“Hh!” he gasped.

The realization was such a shock that Yao Zhi stopped in his tracks. The doctor, the fucking doctor. Of course. He was the only one left with legs. That was suspicious in itself, but he was also always whispering shit in Gyokumen's ears. The queen listened to him. Also, what kind of doctor was he anyway? He was a filthy selkie, too, he had to be! Shit, this was bigger than even Yao Zhi had expected! But, hey, for once, he was the one with the key to fix it all!

Yes, yes, that was it. Yao Zhi just needed to kill the seals. He would start with the guy in confinement... how hard could it be to kill a prisoner locked down in a cell? He didn't have his hide, he would be as weak as any disarmed human, mass murderer or not. Yao Zhi had his weapons and the added advantage of a body adapted to an aquatic environment. It would be easy. And justified, the guy was not only a conspirator and a menace, he was a psychopath too, a monster. Then, he would hunt the jiangshi down. She was also no big deal, not much more than a puppet that had managed to free just one of her limbs from the strings. She would pose no problem for a warrior as hardened as Yao Zhi was. No moral dilemma either, she was technically dead already. 

And next, when the evil enemies in the shadows were done for, he would unmask the doctor as the selkie traitor that he was. Then, with all the threats neutralized, the ritual would continue and merkind would reach its due greatness once gain. All thanks to him, to his quick thinking, his braveness.

Grinning, more excited than he had felt in ages, Yao Zhi swam on.


	72. Chapter 72

Being locked up in a small, dark cell, shackled to the wall drastically reduced the amount of distractions that might potentially divert your attention from what your senses were perceiving. 

That meant that, when Hakkai thought he had heard something, he adopted immediately a state of alertness. Most especially because it hadn't been so long ago that the guards had checked on him. They only came once a day, always in pairs and usually talked to each other on their way. That was not the kind of noise he had heard.

Hakkai crouched as close to the wall as he could, ready to spring. Maybe if he kept as coiled as possible, whoever was coming would misjudge the length of his chains and Hakkai would be able to get to them, if he was fast enough. It was a small cell, after all; the door wasn't so far away. He needed to be ready. Not that he expected to be able to free himself afterwards, but if he was going to be dragged to the ritual and sacrificed to awake the god he had sworn to restrain, Hakkai was determined to fall fighting. 

After a long, expectant silence, he heard it again. Yes, someone was out there. Hakkai kept his head down, the glimmer in his eyes hidden by his floating bangs.

Once again, he couldn't help thinking of Gojyo. Of his cocky grin, his supple body, his silly trust. 

_I'm sorry, Gojyo_ , Hakkai thought, eyes fixed on the floor of the cell, _I'm sorry_.


	73. Chapter 73

“This is creepy,” Gojyo murmured as they swam through the empty streets of the citadel.

Sanzo couldn't help but agree, but he'd rather bite off his own tongue than admitting the kappa had a point. R'lyeh looked deserted at first sight, like a ghost city where not even the fish dared to roam, but from time to time they could spot scared faces half hidden behind a glassless window, wary of them, watching their advance from the relative, illusionary safety of what was surely considered home. No one confronted them or tried to stop them. No one dared to be caught in the open.

“Won't they warn their queen that we're coming?” Goku asked.

“She knows we're coming, stupid,” Gojyo said, “she lured us here.”

“Tch,” said Sanzo, unconvinced. He wasn't so sure about the chain of events, nor of the queen's weight in them. Some of the merpeople's actions didn't add up and nothing was ever simple with the Outer Gods involved.

R´lyeh must have been built on the surface only to sink down at some point in history, because its structure made no sense from an underwater perspective. The palace was, in fact, elevated, erected on a hill, the tallest construction of the whole citadel, domineering over houses and shops as if the height would pose some advantage against enemies that weren't earthbound. All the buildings looked one step away from derelict, ready to crumble down at the change of the tide, as if their inhabitants didn't care about their maintenance. Or as if they lacked the materials and the knowledge to protect the city from the destructive erosion of seawater, from the attacks of Deep Ones.

More eyes fixed on them the closer they got to the palace's gates.

“Why won't they attack us?” Goku asked, puzzled.

“They're scared shitless,” Sanzo said. “Things have been rough lately for them and strangers rarely bring good news. Merpeople aren't so different from landpeople; they aren't inherently evil, they just hunt humans because that's what they eat. But they have families, they love and they fear. They don't feel the drive to kill anything that moves, they just want to survive, like everybody else.”

That made sense, Gojyo thought, and fit what Jien had told him. He idly wondered how it would be, a world where everybody, regardless of species or race, could just go about their lives peacefully, safely, doing their own things, without anyone being hurt. 

“We're here,” Sanzo said.

In front of them, the immense gates of the palace opened in a dark, welcoming yawn. No army presented itself to stop them. That, more than anything, made them think that this had surely to be a trap. 

They entered anyway.


	74. Chapter 74

“Hey! Hey! Wake up, dude! Wake up!” Zakuro said, on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

He patted his comrade's cheeks in the most respectful mini-slaps he could manage, but seeing that it got him the same results as shaking her did-- that is, none-- he went to the guard's partner and tried with him. He didn't wake up, either.

The corridors had been even more deserted than usual and the very few fellow guards he had come across were all spacing out, as if dreaming with their eyes open. Zakuro was an illusionist, a magician-- all right, it was not real magic he did, just sleight of hand, card tricks, getting octopuses out of top hats and the like-- but he was good at hypnosis and he could recognize a trance when he saw one.

There was something very weird going on and Zakuro didn't have the first clue of what it was.

Because now that he had had the time to overcome the disorientation and confusion, he wasn't totally sure Yao Zhi had been right. His partner was not a bad guy, really, no matter what everybody thought of him; yeah, he was an asshole, but not totally evil, just... a bit of a negative person. Bitter. And that made him jump to conclusions, sometimes. So Zakuro didn't buy that they were under a coordinated attack from the selkies (when had the selkies declared war on them? And why? Just because the queen had revived one and captured another? Did their herd even know that? Wouldn't the military in the palace have been informed if they were really at war and risked being attacked today of all days? Wouldn't the guard outside the hall have been doubled instead of halved? What if the sleeping guards were related to the ritual, like balancing energies or some such shit? If that were the case... was it really a good idea to interrupt the queen when it might have been she who had ordered the jiangshi to put the guards to sleep for some unfathomable reason? Although, on the other hand, was a selkie jiangshi to be trusted?).

“Aaaarghhhh,” Zakuro exclaimed in frustration, at a loss of what to do.

Before he made a potentially rash (and deadly) decision, he would rather find out what the hell was going on. But he couldn't do that alone and the rest of the guards just. Wouldn't. Fucking. Wake. Up.

Maybe he would have more luck with another guard. Maybe familiarity was key? After all, Yao Zhi had managed to get him out of his own stupor and Yao Zhi wasn't particularly smart. Zakuro knew himself to be smarter. He would figure it out.

Nodding to himself, he left the guards where they were, floating in place, eerily immobile, and went in search of more people. Maybe he would find someone conscious, someone who could help. Or he might be able to wake them up, if not.

_More people, more people,_ he kind of sing-songed in his head as he went through the corridors, _more people, more-- hah!_

His heart felt lighter when he spotted the group after turning the corner. Awesome, finally someone who was awake! Several someones, in fact! And they--!

_Fuck._

\--swam kicking their legs. Legs. They had legs, fucking legs. One of them wasn't even swimming as much as... walking? No, he was also trying to jump off the floor to take impulse to swim... but he really sucked at it. What the everloving fuck? And another one was kind of... disguised as an anemone? All floating white fabric surrounding him... no, her? Him? What?

Okay, they hadn't seen him yet, what to do, what to do... maybe Yao Zhi was right and the palace was under attack. Maybe the selkies had been robbed of their ability to change and they were charging against the merfolk in hopes of reversing the situation (because, seriously, legs, nobody wanted to be stuck with legs). Maybe the queen had done something to them, divested them of their--

_Oh, shit._

No time to reflect on the mysteries of life, the selkies had spotted him and were drawing their weapons... from fucking thin air. Cool. Not only that, those weapons looked mean. They _glowed_.

Stressed beyond belief, with half the palace asleep, the other half busy summoning an ancient god, Yao Zhi in who-knew-where doing who-knew-what and only Zakuro to defend the front, he decided to do what he did best: he bluffed.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha!!” he laughed, as loudly as he could. It was easy, he naturally tended to laugh when overwhelmed by anxiety. Okay, maybe it sounded a tiny, little bit forced, but probably the strangers wouldn't be able to tell. “Do you think your puny weapons can do anything against the great, amazing, unequaled, Great Zakuro?”

He opened his arms wide open, as if he was unafraid of them and confident in his invulnerability. He even put care in the angle of his wrists, one of them turned up, the other one to the front. He had rehearsed that pose in the mirror and knew he looked the most elegant that way. Holy shit, they'd better buy it or he was fried. He kept his distance, just in case.

“He said 'great' twice. Why did he say 'great' twice?” the shorter guy, the one who didn't really swim asked. “Hakkai would have said that it's not a good use of the language. He always narrows his eyes at me when I repeat words. Which is really creepy, because he won't stop smiling while doing that.”

“I'm sure it's compensation,” the redhead said, making a gesture that said without a doubt what part he thought Zakuro was making up for. “You know, when you boast too much about size...”

Zakuro took offense. Usually his audience was respectful, if not in awe, when he made his great (yeah, _great,_ dammit) entrances.

“It's my artistic name, okay? I'm the Great Zakuro. Because I'm great. That's why I say I'm great as well as 'the Great Zakuro'. Maybe your grammar works differently. We speak like this, here. And it's nothing sexual,” he added, judgment his eyes, “you pervert.”

Shorty turned to Pervy and pointed his finger at him.

“Ha, ha, he saw through you at once.”

Pervy cuffed Shorty.

“Ouch!”

No, seriously, they were the worst kind of audience ever, Zakuro had had less ruckus when performing for fucking fry. It's like they were trying to take the spotlight away from him with a ridiculous clown number.

“Listen to me!” he declaimed with his most intriguing and compelling voice. He removed his pendant from his neck and started to swing it in front of them, making it catch the light. “I'm going to count to three. When I reach--”

BANG.

The pendant exploded in one million pieces.

“Don't have time for this shit,” Anemone deadpanned, moving forwards.

Eyes wide as saucers, Zakuro swallowed. For one second he had forgotten how serious the situation really was. He was out-manned, out-armed and the strangers meant business. If his display of magic hadn't impressed them, he really doubted his standard-issued sword would. Zakuro was not a coward, but it would help absolutely no one if he were to die here.

“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed even more desperately than before, swimming closer to the wall. This was the northern wing, the one that connected with the main entrance. The labyrinthine design of its corridors wasn't the only defense that protected this old castle from invasion. “You will regret defying the Great Zakuro, you heathens!” Then, Zakuro gasped, “wait! What's that behind you?!”

Not that the strangers had looked back, they hadn't, but at least they had stopped for long enough to make faces and murmur 'what the fuck', and that gave Zakuro time to pull the sconce. He prayed he hadn't fucked up and it was the right one.

Fortunately, the sconce gave way and a groan could be heard. It gave way to a mix of deep rumbling and bright rattle. At least this would buy Zakuro some time.

The foreigners tensed in alert.

The noise became louder, water vibrating with it.

“Sanzo!” Shorty shouted.

Anemone looked up and his eyes widened.

“Fuck.”

The heavy portcullis fell, lightning fast, roaring in its way down and raising a million of tiny bubbles that clouded the waters. It touched the floor with a deafening, thunderous clank.

Silence reigned, broken only by the last rattling of the chains that had released the mechanism. Then, they also settled.

There was an unbearable moment of tension when Zakuro thought that, instead of keeping the strangers away, the portcullis had cleaved one of them in half. The thing was that Zakuro had only enrolled as a palace guard because, well, nobody had tried to invade them in ages, right? It looked like an easy, boring job. And times were hard; yes, the pay was low but also stable. But Zakuro was not a violent guy, he had never wanted to kill anyone. Never. Not even humans. He had signed up for the pro-sentient movement ages ago. And, lousy audience or not, the strangers hadn't sounded or looked like blood-thirsty enemies, just like a bunch of regular guys (albeit with legs). Damn.

Scared of what he would see, Zakuro opened the eyes he had reflexively closed at the impact. The bubbles had already cleared.

“Tch.” Anemone said, lying on the floor under the apparently heavy weight of Shorty. The kid must have shoved his overdressed partner out of the way of the portcullis just in the nick of time.

Zakuro smiled, relieved. Suddenly he remembered what they were supposed to be doing here and, with a small shake, he focused again.

“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed, loudly. “You will never find the way out of this--! Oh, shit.”

Because, well, the plan hadn't gone as expected and the portcullis wasn't a barrier between him and the strangers, two of them were actually still on Zakuro's side of the corridor, and one of them, Shorty, the sack of rocks, was getting up and summoning his magical staff while he grinned at Zakuro.

_Oh, oh,_ he thought. That was not a comforting grin.

This time it wasn't an intended dramatic effect, this time his guffaws came out because he was on the brink of hysteria.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha!!” he laughed as he swam away as fast as he could. “Go back to where you came from! You're still in time! Nothing but death and suffering awaits you here! Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy eeeend...!”

As he put more distance between himself and the strangers, he could hear them shouting.

“Goku! No!”

“But...”

Then their voices faded out as Zakuro shot through the water in the direction of the throne hall.

They were under attack; like it or not, he had to sound the alarm.


	75. Chapter 75

“Fuck,” Sanzo said, trying to once again pull the hem of his robe from the shank of the portcullis that had trapped it. It was in vain, either the structure weighted a ton or, more probably, it was locked in place as the security measure that it was.

“Can't you, you know...?” Gojyo suggested from the other side, wiggling his fingers in a stupid gesture that Sanzo guessed was meant to signify the use of magic. 

Sanzo deadpanned a glare. It was a specialty of his, this making a totally blank expression look like he wished you fell dead to the ground to spare him the imbecility. 

“No,” he said.

Magic was not for free. There were restrictions that Sanzo, in this form, had to comply with. He wouldn't risk it so close to their goal. They had bigger enemies than a piece of grille.

Gojyo, the asshole, shrugged and made a face like saying 'what more can I do' as Goku finally brought himself to stop looking longingly at the corridor the merman had disappeared into and came back to help.

“I'm sure I could have beat him,” he whined as he tried to lift the portcullis. Without a word, the stupid kappa joined his efforts. Sanzo didn't; he knew it would be useless.

“You never would have caught him, you swim like a stone,” Sanzo murmured as he pulled again, this time with stronger jerks. “That clown's plan could very well have been to separate us from the very beginning; better not to divide our forces more than necessary.”

Finally, his robes tore with an ugly ripping sound. Satisfied, Sanzo turned towards the corridor.

“It stands to reason that the center of this fucking labyrinth is the biggest and most important hall here. The throne room. There must be more than one way to reach it,” he said, starting to swim without looking back. “Meet us there as soon as possible.” 

“Wait, what? Really?!” he could distantly hear the kappa complaining as he swam away, “Are you fucking kidding me?!” 

Sanzo turned the corner, Goku on his heels, and the annoying voice faded out.


	76. Chapter 76

He had been barely eight the first time. And it hadn't been a big deal, really, but still, some things, silly or not, stuck to you for some stupid reason. Yao Zhi had never stood out at anything, he was pretty average even as a kid; never too bad, but never good enough, either. But that time, that time, he had done it, he had managed to create something extraordinary, he had drawn the most beautiful, wondrous seahorse ever. He had been very proud of it. So when that asshole Kensuke had made Chun Hua cry, he had decided to give it to her so that she would feel better. Yao Zhi had liked her a lot, back then. But Yao Zhi was shy, had always been shy, because other kids tended to laugh at him, so he was scared of opening up too much and thus, instead of talking to her, he had just left the drawing on her desk. 

And then, that son of a bitch, that stupid Izanagi has said the drawing was his. Well, not really, he hadn't outright claimed it, but he was the kid who was best at drawing in the class and Chun Hua and the rest of the kids had assumed it had been he. Izanagi hadn't denied it. He should have, it was Yao Zhi's drawing, dammit. But he had taken the credit and when Yao Zhi had tried to tell the class that the drawing was his, nobody had believed him (he was not that good at anything, after all). So they had called him a liar, and said he was jealous and laughed at him. Chun Hua had kissed Izanagi's cheek as thanks and Yao Zhi hadn't been able to stand it. That should have been his.

It was a very stupid thing to remember at this particular point of time, inconsequential, just something silly. Kids' stuff. But it was just his luck, the rest of his life had been like a repetition in a bigger and bigger scale of that incident. So he didn't even try anymore, because the very few times that he managed to gather the energy, it ended up being for nothing and either his efforts were ignored or someone else took the credit for them. And, to be honest, Yao Zhi was fucking fed up. But this time it was different: the whole palace was asleep. This was his chance to break the streak and finally get recognition for what he did.

Yes, this was the right corridor, Yao Zhi was sure. He was nearly there, he could already see the door.

After all these years of frustration, of hunger, of seeing how younger comrades were promoted before him, of watching his folk being hunted down by the Deep Ones, of fish becoming more and more scarce, of being forbidden to hunt, of friends going crazy with grief and desperation, of being looked down, ignored, despised, lonely... finally, fucking finally, he had a clear objective, a clear culprit. Someone evil, a foreigner, an enemy of their race. Someone who deserved what was coming to him. Someone to pay.

That selkie was as good as dead already.


	77. Chapter 77

Hakkai heard the distinct sound of a key being first put in, then turned inside the lock. All his muscles tensed, ready. The door opened, little by little, letting the faintest hint of light spill on the floor. Not enough to see by, not with his head down to hide his pale skin from sight.

Hakkai kept himself perfectly still.

 _Wait, wait, wait_ , he told himself.

A shadow blocked the little light that was coming from the corridor.

 _Yes,_ Hakkai thought.

The intruder entered the cell.

_Come on, come on..._

The shadow came closer; slowly, tentatively.

Hakkai snapped.

“Shit!!” Kanan's voice shrieked as she startled, badly, unable to jump back effectively in the water.

Hakkai couldn't say if it was the short length of his chains, recognizing her as the intruder or hearing her swear that stopped him dead in his tracks.

There was a strange moment where the both of them just stood there, immobile, watching each other, Hakkai shackled down and repressing the weird urge to chuckle, Kanan with wide eyes and her hands covering her mouth.

“Ah... I apologize for the uncouth language,” she finally said, “I... have had a bad day.”

Hakkai couldn't hold back anymore, he burst out laughing.

That seemingly shook Kanan out of her spell, because she came to him and started fiddling with a keyring, methodically trying out each key in the lock of his shackles. Hakkai made an effort to tone down his happiness. It was not the best moment to feel giddy. It was just... he was really glad to see her.

“Ha!” Kanan crowed when she found the right key and the shackles fell open.

Hakkai didn't waste a single second and as soon as the cold metal left his skin, he hugged Kanan fiercely, tight, not even hearing the sound the chains made when they hit the floor.

He kissed her hair, her brow, wrapped himself around her until he felt her tense in his embrace. That gave him pause.

“I... I am sorry... Gonou...”

Her voice sounded small, anguished. Ashamed. Hakkai felt that old familiar righteous fury, _wrath_ , burn in his chest again. They would pay for this. And he would enjoy it, making them. The world would change the name of the ocean after he was done with the merfolk's queen and her cultists.

He tightened his arms around Kanan, racking his brain to find the right thing to say.

“Well,” he said in a bright tone, “it's admissible to curse once when you're having a bad day. But don't make a habit out of it, mm?”

Kanan hit him at that, but she didn't disengage, her face still hidden, burrowed in his chest.

“Asshole,” she whispered.

“Tsk, tsk,” Hakkai tutted, “that's twice.”

Weirdly enough, that was what finally broke the dam on Kanan's emotions, what destroyed the iron grip she had needed to hold herself together and to not let herself feel, to pretend she was as dead inside as she was outside, to keep on functioning and do everything she had had to do without crumbling down in a lump of pain and remorse and regret and self-pity and anger and sorrow.

So, after the inner tide of feelings proved to be too overwhelming and all her precarious defenses had been struck too many times, she cried. It started slowly, quietly, barely a moan. She shuddered in Hakkai's arms and then quieted again after she desperately grabbed the last shreds of her composure. But it was harder, once you had had a leak, to keep the sluice gate closed; maybe she still was unable to produce tears, nothing could come out of her eyes, but that didn't stop something inside her from breaking and thus, she sobbed, sobbed and wailed and clung to Hakkai's warm, warm, warm body, her fists clenched tight, gripping his shirt, nearly tearing its fabric, her face buried in his chest, her body shaking, threatening to dissolve in all the agony that betraying the person she loved the most in the world had caused her.

Hakkai tightened his embrace even more, afraid to crush her thin frame but even more terrified of letting her feel unloved, guilty, held accountable for what others had done to her against her will.

“Kanan, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” he murmured, voice breaking as he kissed her hair, her face, any part of her he could reach, “I'm never there to protect you, I'm never there to help you, I'm just never there.”

It was funny how, before, it had been she who was the affectionate one. Hakkai was simply not the demonstrative kind and he had just foolishly taken it for granted. Now he couldn't stop himself from kissing her, from clinging to her.

Kanan shook her head but didn't talk. She was still shuddering, trying to control her sobs, starting to calm down. Her grip on his shirt relaxed and she allowed herself to hug him back, to circle his waist with her arms and hold him close, lovingly more than desperately this time.

Many minutes passed, both of them unwilling to move, to think, comforted by each other's presence, each other's touch. However, little by little, reality started to seep in again. Kanan was the first to pull away.

“You... you need your hide,” she said.

But, even knowing she was right and they didn't really have the luxury of time, Hakkai didn't let go. This was important, too.

“Kanan...”

Keeping one arm around her, he used his other hand to cup her face and raise her chin. She hadn't looked him in the eye once since the initial shock. Trustingly, she allowed it, she knew what he was asking for and she decided to give it to him. Finally, she made eye contact.

Hakkai could see that it was hard on her, that she didn't want him to see, that she still hurt.

“Kanan,” he whispered again, with devotion. He then kissed her brow. Hakkai couldn't give her all of his heart again because it was not totally his to give anymore, but he needed her to understand that that didn't mean he loved her any less for it. It was... difficult to understand, even to himself, and even harder to explain, so he said nothing, he just kept looking at her as if she were the most beautiful selkie in the world. Because she was.

She tried a timid smile. Hakkai knew she only did it for him, so he kissed her cheek in gratitude. Her smile looked less strained after that.

“Let's go, Gonou,” she said.

Not without a certain amount of reluctance, this time Hakkai let her go.


	78. Chapter 78

Selkies didn't have a sixth sense that told them where their hides were. It was more like a nondirectional pull, a strong longing that tied you to whomever had the pelt in their power and not to the pelt itself. The craving could drive you crazy, but it wouldn't help you to locate that part of yourself.

But that wasn't a problem, because Kanan knew exactly where Gonou's hide was hidden. The queen had made Kanan do it, after all, dismissing it as unimportant so long as Sanzo's party was broken apart. Stupid mermaid.

It had been hard to leave Gonou's arms, very hard. Kanan had missed that, had missed his touch, his love. She had thought that he would never be able to forgive her, because Gonou was sweet and patient, but he really knew how to hold a grudge. And Kanan had really hurt him; more than once. And she would hurt him again. Kanan had wanted to stay in his arms instead until the world collapsed around them, but after so long doing what others told her to do, of being no more than a puppet, a leaf pushed around by the wind, this time she was determined to grab the helm and do the right thing. For Gonou, for the world and for herself.

“This way,” she said as they swam out of the cell, past a couple of daydreaming guards.

In human form, they couldn't really hold hands and swim at the same time, not if they wanted to hurry, but they kept as close to one another as they possibly could, bumping into each other at times, just as they would if they were seals.

Damn, but Kanan missed that, too. How she wished she could--

“Is it also there?” Gonou asked, “your hide?”

Kanan had forgotten how easily Gonou always read her mind. He rarely was this direct, though. Kanan couldn't be totally sure what it was that he was really asking, so she just gave him a smile. It was a sad smile. Gonou was extremely clever, he would understand.

They encountered another couple of guards. They had been together at first, the four guards, watching over the merfolk's most important prisoner. Kanan had had to trick them into separating before being able to reduce them. Not an easy feat in these times of suspicion, but the queen had actually done most of the work for her already; the monarch's single-focused ambition, her failure at communication and the irrational cruelty she displayed in the face of disobedience in a misguided attempt to earn her subjects' loyalty, had all played in Kanan's favor. Just a quick reminder of under whose power Kanan was acting, and the guards had followed her lead.

“Will they wake up if I touch them?” Hakkai asked as he got closer to them.

“No, no,” Kanan replied distractedly, trying to orient herself and remember the way back, “they'll only awake if you repeat their given names several times in a row.”

“I wasn't aware the spell you used on Gojyo acted upon the masses,” Hakka murmured as he took the knife and its sheath from one of them and tied the belt around his own waist. The guard, as predicted, didn't react.

“It didn't,” Kanan said, completely certain now that they should turn left. This was not an area she had been in before, but the prince's indications had been very clear and she was good at remembering that sort of thing.

“Did you enchant them one by one, then?” Gonou frowned, “But they were together... they wouldn't happen to wait patiently their turn, would they?”

Kanan paused and looked at him. She suddenly realized that her old self would never have tried to asphyxiate someone until they lost consciousness. That the Kanan Gonou knew and fell in love with hated violence and always kept her cool, never lost her temper. The old Kanan believed that love conquered everything, that it healed wounded souls and fixed the bad behaviour of naughty children. That everybody was good by nature. That violence engendered only violence. That kindness would save the world.

She knew better now. She had changed. And yes, Gonou had also changed. But they hadn't changed together. They didn't know each other anymore.

“Ah, no... no, they didn't, not really,” she replied with a forced smile. 

Gonou had also paused and was looking at her with what Kanan was sure was the reflection of her own sadness.

“Come on,” Kanan said, bumping purposefully into him once again when she resumed her way. Gonou promptly followed and made a point of also bumping against her.

Believing she had put every single enemy under a spell and all the corridors were deserted, she didn't pay enough attention to what might be lurking in the shadows.


	79. Chapter 79

Hidden behind a corner, Yao Zhi watched as the selkies swam away.

“Shit,” he mumbled.

Yao Zhi worried at his lower lip as he pondered what the best course of action was now. He was wary of confronting them in the open, they were wielders of powerful magics... maybe he should wake up someone else... no, that only meant he would be ignored and laughed at again, or worse, that they would fight and kill the selkies and make him look like a fool and a coward. He would rather die fighting. After all the shit he had put up with, after all the fuck ups that weren't really his fault, after all his damned bad luck, the fucking universe owed him this.

So, well, okay, only one way to go, right? It wasn't as if he was at a total disadvantage. He still had the speed and agility over them. The selkies had only taken a knife for the two of them and he not only carried both of his weapons, he also had the palace's built-in defenses at his disposal. Yeah, he could do this. He would keep an eye on them and wait for his chance, it was sure to come, it was already established that the universe fucking owed it to him.

“Just you wait...” he hissed as he stealthily started to follow the selkies, vowing to be their silent, invisible angel of death.


	80. Chapter 80

“So, not all the guards are spacing out,” Goku said with his usual cheerfulness as they struggled to advance through the water.

“Hn,” Sanzo replied, eyes fixed on the way ahead.

All the fucking corridors looked the fucking same. It was starting to get on his nerves. If, after this, he never saw a body of water again, Sanzo would be happy the rest of his damn existence. He would even consider ditching baths altogether if--

“Sanzo.”

That hadn't been the monkey's usual whining, it had been clipped, quiet. A warning. Sanzo stopped swimming and readied his gun. He trusted Goku's instincts, even if his own senses hadn't tingled just yet. The corridor where they were was dark, as dimly lit as the others. Nothing moved in the water except the water itself. All the shadows were static, only dead ashlar as far as the eye could see.

Sanzo still resisted the impulse to go on, to move. Through the corner of his eye, he saw Goku summon his nyoi-bo. That was when he heard it. The corridor ahead forked in two not very far away from where they stood. There was a low murmur, or maybe a rustle (a bit of tingling?) coming from the right leg. There was someone there. 

Calm, as he always was when he aimed his weapon, Sanzo raised his arm and waited.


	81. Chapter 81

Eyeing his men, Kougaiji made an effort not to let his desperation show. Even after waking up the loyal, there were just too few of them; the corridor where they had all met didn't even feel crowded. According to Dokugakuji, they could also count as allies some of the men inside the hall. They wouldn't act by themselves, but if Kougaiji led an attack to interrupt the ritual, they would join him. Yaone had come up with a code to tell apart friend from foe in the chaos that was sure to ensue.

Everything would be different if Sanzo was here, Doku and Yaone had said. Apparently, the guy was powerful enough to tip the balance in their favour, and with the small army of cultists in the queen's ranks, they sorely needed a trump card who could counterbalance all the preternatural powers in play. However, after their last communication, Kougaiji's right hand hadn't been able to reach the priest anymore, so they had no way of knowing if he was somewhere inside the palace, still on his way or dead in the stomach of a Deep One. Neither did they know about the jiangshi and the other member of Sanzo's party she was so desperately searching for. But the thing was that they couldn't wait until they found out, Lirin couldn't wait until they found out, the world couldn't wait until they found out. The time was now. 

Kougaiji tried to come up with a good pep talk before marching towards the hall. It was hard, knowing that he was leading every single one of these soldiers to what would probably be their deaths. Kougaiji wasn't afraid for himself; he knew what the right thing to do was, but it was somehow harder to drag others down the drain of doom with you. There was no guarantee that their sacrifice wouldn't be useless, that they weren't going to die for nothing, only able to delay barely five minutes what couldn't be stopped anymore. Not by a bunch of rebels armed with swords and good intentions. Not against magic and ancient gods.

He looked at them. Their faces were worried but hopeful. Not all, but some of them were very young. It broke Kougaiji's heart. 

“I'm not going to lie to you,” he started, grave, solemn, looking by turns into the eyes of all of his people, “today we are going to fight against an enemy far bigger and powerful than we are; against our own brothers and sisters; against--”

“Kougaiji-sama,” Yaone whispered, low but urgent. She was looking at the end of the corridor. 

Kougaiji raised a hand and everybody waited, as silent and expectant as before, but now with their senses open to their environment. They didn't know what was going on, but their faith in their prince was absolute. Kougaiji hoped to be worthy of it.

Following Yaone's stare, he finally saw it. There was some fluctuation in the dim light that came from the corridor that crossed the one they had gathered in. The bioluminescent algae and small hatchetfish that comprised the torches that illuminated the palace emitted too diffuse a light to cast defined shadows, but a body moving through the corridors would still subtly affect the level of light and also disturb the natural currents that traveled through the palace to keep the place oxygenated.

There was someone in that corridor. An awake someone.

Kougaiji signed his orders; at least for that, their reduced number was an advantage: the amount of confusion was minimal and soon his guards were nodding to express their understanding. Everybody carefully drew their swords. Dokugakuji took point, Kougaiji and Yaone right behind him. 

All eyes were fixed on Kougaiji, waiting for his order to advance. Focused on the crossroad, fist in the air telling his people to be patient, Kougaiji tried to analyze the patterns of the light and the currents and find the right moment. 

Expectant, ready, the merpeople waited.


	82. Chapter 82

“Eet steends tee reeseen theet thee ceenteer eef thees feecking leebeereenth ees thee beeggeest heell here,” Gojyo mocked under his breath as he swam through the dark corridors. They all looked the fucking same.

No, really, when this was all over, he would wring the neck of that fucking monk, he swore to God. Surely Hakkai would forgive him after he explained what a big dick Sanzo was. Gojyo would apologize properly and everything if necessary.

Turning another corner, identical to the last one, he paused, alarmed, as he spotted a couple of merpeople ahead. They were just floating there, though, keeping strangely in place in spite of the subtle movement of the water in which they rested. They were obviously asleep, as the guards at the gates had been. That had been confusing, at first, with Sanzo pointing his gun at them and Goku and Gojyo readying their weapons while the guards stared at them doing nothing, replying nothing even after Sanzo had directed his ass-holy-ness at them in the shape of a direct question and a shot of warning that had ended up ricocheting off the wall and nearly hitting Gojyo back. 

They had just left the mermen there, then, even if it looked like the guards were trying to pull on them the cheapest trick ever and that this was obviously a trap that would come back to bite them in the ass later, but what could they have done? They weren't cold-blooded murderers, there was no way they could hurt the guys when they were so obviously out of it.

It was still creepy as fuck, Gojyo thought as he swam past the couple in the corridor, watching them carefully in case it was all a ruse. But no, just like the ones at the gate, these too remained asleep, unresponsive. Hell, but he hated coming so close to them, flaunting his own liveliness in front of their statue-like stillness. A part of Gojyo half feared that, the moment he relaxed around them, they would start moving, stretching their arms in front of them and chasing after him while moaning 'brains, brains'. 

But nope, apparently their trance-like state was kind of permanent or something. Gojyo left them behind and still they didn't react (Gojyo kept an eye on them, he really could do without the extra heart attack were they to sneak up on him). 

Okay, another fork ahead. Right or left? He really hoped he hadn't been swimming in circles, that would be like the lousiest shit ever, to spend the apocalypse lost in a maze like a stupid rat. But no, those guards hadn't looked like they had moved recently and they were the first ones Gojyo had met since the gates.

Shit, but the jeans he wore were annoying as fuck. He bet half the ocean had gotten caught in its fibers, they were rigid, uncomfortable and weighted a ton. He would ditch them in a second if he didn't think that the only thing worse that spending the apocalypse trapped in a rat maze was spending the apocalypse trapped _starkers_ in a rat maze. He could only imagine Hakkai's face when he found him. 'I can explain', Gojyo would say. Hakkai would just raise an eyebrow, the assho--

Wait.

Something had moved. After choosing the corridor on the right and turning the corner, he was sure he had seen movement at the end of the passage. There was another fork there-- there were forks everyfuckingwhere. Someone had crossed to the left. Suddenly paranoid, he quickly swam back to take a look at the last corridor but no, the guards were still asleep. Even faster than before, thinking that it might have been his lost companions (or, if not, someone who could guide him out of this fucking labyrinth), he swam back to the crossroad. He couldn't do that comfortably with an ass-long bladed shovel in his hand, though, so he decided not to call up his shakujou; he just prayed to gods he didn't really believe in that whomever he had seen wasn't waiting in the next corridor, aware that Gojyo was coming, armed and prepared to launch a full-on attack on him.

He then turned the corner.


	83. Chapter 83

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

The unrelenting chanting had a strange lulling effect. The initial looks of confusion, fear, hope and desperation of the crowd had slowly given way to sedated faces and rocking bodies. The repetition was comforting, in a way. Ensnaring. Like a trap that used your own comfy bed as bait when you were truly tired. Gyokumen Koushu could also feel herself entering the trance-like state. She allowed it gladly; it would only help her in what was to come.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

First in a low voice, then louder and louder as she gained momentum, the queen recited the words of the spell. She had paid a high price to master the foreign language, but all the nightmares, all the panic attacks would be worth it in the end.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Her voice rose above the chanting of the cultists, just as she did, behind the altar in the highest point of the hall. She stretched her arms in offering. Gyokumen had memorized the spell, she knew it by heart, she didn't need to look at the book anymore. It was really long, though, divided in segments that required determined gestures and offerings as well as words to be completed.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu--_

BLAM!

_\--R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

The doors slamming open had been enough to catch her attention, but not as disruptive as to break her concentration and make her stop.

The loud yelling did.

“We're under attack!! It's the selkies! An army of selkies is here to regain their lost shape-shifting powers! They are armed with magical weapons! And camouflaged as anemones!”

Still too focused on the ritual to process such a string of nonsense, the queen glared in silence at the lowly guard posed at the entrance of the hall. He had also his arms stretched wide after opening the doors, mirroring her stance, like mocking her. Gyokumen didn't appreciate that.

The guard stared back, eyes like saucers, maybe, just maybe, if he had enough of a brain, realizing what he had just done.

The cultists completely ignored the interruption and kept on chanting, but the rest of the audience started to show some unrest.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

“You!” Gyokumen hissed.

Slowly, hesitant, the guard raised a finger and pointed at himself.

“Me?” he said in a high-pitched voice.

Gyokumen still didn't know for sure who this fool must be in cahoots with, she didn't trust Ni, but this was definitely too ham-handed to fit the Herald's style; maybe he was one of Kougaiji's spies who, having flown under the radar, was desperate enough to attempt such a ridiculous, stupid plot. What Gyokumen did know for sure is that the selkie in Sanzo's party had been an outcast, a mass murderer cut out from any social link to any remaining group. His lover was still dead to the world, no ties to any other living being besides the one she was supposed to draw and trap. And Gyokumen had done her homework, there was no herd in the vicinity, not a single selkie within miles and miles around. Only regular seals. She had double-checked. And she wasn't going to address the anemones remark, not even to herself.

So what the hell was this moron trying to pull? And under whose orders?

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

There was another thing Gyokumen knew for sure and that was that she didn't have time right now for this, whatever 'this' was supposed to be. And that meant that this little asshole was going to regret having been spawned.

“I hereby indict you with charges of high treason; I also declare you guilty and sentence you to death,” the queen ordered, serious as a heart attack; she then turned to some of the guards she had posted closer to the entrance, “you and you, get him to the dungeons or carry out the sentence where you catch him, I don't particularly care, but do it outside and don't you dare come back until the ritual has been completed. I trust I have made myself extremely clear.”

The guards she had pointed out to saluted and, keeping their faces blank, swam towards the traitor at the doors, who looked confused, as if trying to decide who he should be pleading with.

“But... but...”

Finally, the little bit of sense he had left kicked in and he turned tail and fled like a bat out of hell, guards right after him.

Gyokumen made a gesture and her subjects hurried to close the doors again.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Great, now she had to start from the beginning. If that little moron wasn't dead when she was done with the ritual, she would kill him herself.

Avoiding looking directly at the altar and at who lay on it, she started her incantation again.


	84. Chapter 84

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Ni had to use all of his not inconsiderable willpower not to burst out laughing. That unlucky bastard had come up with the most delightful, fantastically hare-brained theories ever; the few rebels who had infiltrated were sending confused looks amongst themselves as subtly as they could, asking silently what that had been and how it related to them, if it did at all; and the queen was _fuming_.

_...Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..._

Oh, yes... this was the most fun he had had in literally aeons.


	85. Chapter 85

“Why taking the books?” Hakkai asked while they traveled the deserted corridors. “The queen obviously has one copy of the Necronomicon; she wouldn't need another.”

Kanan made a face, as if conflicted about her own feelings on the matter.

They had been swimming for what felt like hours, but Hakkai was sure it had only been minutes. It was just a slow process when they were in the wrong bodies for it.

“You misunderstand her,” she finally said, looking ahead as she swam, “she's... she might be paranoid and desperate, but she doesn't... she's just trying to prevent Sanzo from stopping her. That's all this is about. So she didn't really steal the books, she just took them away from Sanzo, just... just like she took you away from him.”

Her voice had been small again when she had said that. Kanan was more than aware that it had been she and not the queen who had done the stealing and the taking, but she chose to tread carefully around the topic because she knew Hakkai would get incensed again on her behalf if she openly acknowledged her part in it. It had been like this before too, Kanan avoiding mine fields around Hakkai, refusing to change her views and also erasing from the conversation any chance Hakkai might have had to call her on it. She was damn stubborn, always had been, much more than Gojyo was. And she was subtle where Gojyo was blunt.

“So, you see, it's not... personal,” she continued, carefully choosing her words. “The queen just wants her world to be restored to what it was, she wants the power to resurrect her king, the power to feed her people, the power to chase away predators, the power to live in peace. It's not... I don't think it's power itself the goal, it's what she wants to do with it, which is not... unreasonable under the circumstances, the merfolk are going through rough times-- my goodness, I can't believe I'm defending her... am I really defending her? Don't listen to me, she's truly despicable. I can assure you that no amount of understanding and empathy could ever make me forgive her,” Kanan said that last part with a tense smile. “In any case, she's... in a precarious position. She's not the legitimate monarch, you know. That makes her insecure, she thinks everyone is out to get her. Which leads her to act cruelly to set example and force people to respect her and... well, that just makes people hate her more. This way.”

They turned another corner.

“So, afraid of being overthrown,” Kanan explained, “she put on spies on the prince-- he's also not her legitimate son. All the convoluted intrigues you read on cheap novels? They've got nothing on real life messes, reality always surpasses fiction-- but the spies couldn't find anything to denounce, his behaviour is always flawless, so she spied on the prince's men instead. And that's when she hit the jackpot and found out about Sanzo and... and you. I... I think Ni might have had a hand in all of this, too. There are things that won't fit otherwise. There are many decisions that make no sense from a mermaid's perspective.”

“So when she targeted me...”

“Yes, it wasn't about you, not really. Sanzo was just too powerful to touch, he's...” Kanan frowned at that, “I don't know exactly who Sanzo is, but the queen is really afraid of him and of what he can do. And that's also why she couldn't go after Goku either, much as she wanted-- apparently he's related to the ritual in some way-- because he's directly under Sanzo's protection. That... that left only you.” 

And another corner. It was funny how the spatial disorientation of the place also affected the perception of time, Hakkai thought. He had just lost track of everything at this point.

“You became... ehm, a bit of a legend after you... after I... well, after,” it was becoming harder for her to find the right words. Kanan's voice was lower now. There was no judgment in it, though, just sorrow. “Rumor has it that you alone murdered literally more than one thousand individuals-- I'm not certain I can believe that; I mean, not to doubt your prowess, Gonou, but it takes forever to take down one single man, you would have needed hours, days, to finish off a thousand, and not that you eat much, but even you would have needed to... ah, sorry, I digress-- the thing is that they thought you were a key player; powerful, deadly, at home at sea. It would thwart Sanzo's plans if they were to get you. And they knew exactly how, since... well, the legend not only said how many, it also mentioned why you killed them. And the book just gave them the means.”

Kanan wasn't swimming as fast now. At first Hakkai thought that it was because of the emotional turmoil that talking about the past and bringing up all those memories was bound to cause. Then he saw the door. 

“I don't totally understand why the queen didn't kill you, though. Or me,” she spoke on, frowning at the door, slowly floating down until she stood on the floor of the corridor, as if needing to finish her train of thought before taking the next step. “Not if she didn't plan on using us as sacrifices... Sanzo's team would still be effectively broken, in a more definitive manner, actually. Why keep... what use are we to her after the ritual?” 

She looked at him then, but Hakkai had no reply for her. Again, too quickly for Hakkai's taste, Kanan averted her gaze.

“We're here,” she said.

The door looked exactly the same as the other ones they had come across. It had a simple locking system with a bar, the kind you just lifted from the outside. Adding the fact that the wood was half rotten already, it didn't look like an extremely safe place to keep important things in.

“Ah, sorry for the mess,” Kanan said as she lifted the bar, letting Hakkai in.

Hakkai's eyebrows crept up his brow at the implication, especially when he swam inside; the space certainly didn't look like living quarters, it was rather a small storage room. He looked at Kanan, like asking if he had misunderstood her words, trying to hide his dismay. He had expected... well, not this. He noticed the door again. The rotten wood had been carved out of the frame from the inside, but the bar hid the hole when the lock was in place. He looked at Kanan again, but she seemed to be back to avoiding eye contact, right hand grasping her opposite arm in a nervous, subconsciously defensive posture. 

It was only then that Hakkai noticed how exhausted, how very drained she looked. Maybe it was only the come-down from the adrenaline rush that was hitting her hard now but, in hindsight, he realized her swimming hadn't been as fast and sleek as it should. He hadn't given it much thought because they had only swam together as seals before, not humans, so he had had no frame of reference, no way to know if the lack of agility was normal or not. But now, he was starting to suspect she might be hurt. And trying to hide it not to worry him. No, wait, that wasn't it, not totally, it wasn't physical exhaustion that made her look so small and evasive, it was something else, something like distrust, no, like guilt... fearing his reaction?

“Kanan...”

“I... I should have... it's there,” she finally pointed out to a corner, “Sanzo's books are in the trunk over there.”

The hide was indeed carefully folded in the only part of the room where the floor was cleared up. The only part where someone could lie down. On the damned floor. Once again, Hakkai felt fire in his chest. He was going to fucking kill them all.

“I know that... I wanted to... once they got you, they didn't need your hide anymore and it was... it is a part of you,” Kanan was talking as if she was asking for forgiveness and, anger clouding his mind, Hakkai couldn't really understand what she might be trying to convey, why she would apologize for being kept in a storage room like a mannequin, “so I kept it. I really wanted to go to you sooner and give it back and set you free and undo what I had done, but... but... things were complicated and... and I might have wanted for you to... and there were guards and people on alert, and the ritual was the perfect distraction and it was hard to fight those guards, especially the first one, oh my God, the first one, what an eel... but never mind that, the thing is that--”

Kanan stopped when she saw Hakkai extending his hand to her, palm up.

Hakkai was not really used to feeling so many things at once and wasn't certain of the best way to act when every messy emotion battling inside him pulled in a different direction. He couldn't be totally consumed by fury because he was also consumed by love and the need to comfort Kanan came first, but she was so distraught that he couldn't be sure a tight hug was going to do her more harm than good at this point. Oh, it would do Hakkai worlds of good, he really, really, really felt the urge to hold her right now, but for once, this was not about him; and thus, he couldn't kill the siren queen this very instant because she wasn't there and he couldn't embrace Kanan as he would like to because that was what he wanted, but maybe not what she needed, and he had never been good at this, but he was trying, he was trying, so he just extended his hand, asking Kanan for her touch, giving her the choice instead of taking it from her. He just hoped all this anguish wasn't showing too much on his face, but judging by Kanan's reaction, he wasn't being too successful.

“Gonou,” she said, finally releasing her hold on her own arm and coming closer, gingerly putting her hand on his.

Hakkai knew it had taken her an effort, that it was hard on her to keep herself open instead of clamming up. But he had no words to express his gratitude, so he just took Kanan's hand and brought it to his lips, trying to, at the very least, convey a tiny bit of his devotion. Because, if he had understood correctly, Kanan was trying to apologize for not setting him free sooner, as though it hadn't been a big enough feat that she had managed to do so on her own, as if the timing hadn't been the only one she had had left, as if clinging to Hakkai's hide as her only source of comfort was something she shouldn't have done, as if any of this was her fucking fault. Wasn't it enough being made to go through hell again and again? Did it also have to change you and make you think you were not worth anything? To make you doubt your every step? Kanan hadn't been insecure before, had never been afraid of losing Hakkai's consideration. She had been mild-mannered, kind, yes, but also confident in their feelings for one another; she had been as ready as Hakkai, if not more, to cross any line, to overlook any taboo in order for them to be together. How, just how, could he revert all this and restore her self-confidence?

Hakkai looked at her, searching for the answer. And, strangely enough, he found it: the truth of the matter was that he couldn't. There was nothing he could do. And like most truths, it hurt. 

“Ha, ha, I'm currently feeling the irresistible urge to flay them all alive, ha, ha,” he said lightly, softly caressing Kanan's knuckles. “With my nails.”

Kanan, hit him softly on the chest with her other hand.

“You know it's creepy when you do that,” she chastised.

“Don't care,” he said before taking her head in his hands and kissing her brow, the corner of her eye, the bridge of her nose. The knot in his chest was suffocating him, he needed to loosen it, he needed to let this out.

Kanan, sweet, patient Kanan, allowed it for a while. She seemed to be more grounded now, more sure of herself and of Hakkai's feelings for her. Hakkai didn't stop kissing the crown of her head, her temple, her eyebrow, her cheek... Kanan put her hands on his waist.

“Gonou,” she called softly, not really interrupting him, just asking him to listen, “I need... there are three things I have to discuss with you.”

The dread that statement brought made Hakkai stop anyway. He then kissed her hair, the tip of her nose. More slowly. Softer as before.

“Oh, my, a 'we need to talk' conversation... should I be worried?” he joked with an ease he most definitely wasn't feeling.

It was when Kanan smiled that Hakkai's heart plummeted to the floor. He... he had known this was coming. He just hadn't wanted to see it. 

Now it was his turn to want to avoid eye contact. But he couldn't really afford that, could he? Kanan's eyes were green. He really wanted to look at them, so he did. He wanted to remember them. He wanted to remember her. Slowly, he nodded.

Kanan started to talk.


	86. Chapter 86

When Yao Zhi was nervous, he mumbled. It helped him focus, hearing a voice; the sound grounded him, gave shape to his ideas and made them real. And he was definitely nervous right now.

The selkies were busy, plotting inside the room. If there was a moment to end them, this was it, while they were distracted and staying in one place. But they outnumbered him and, clumsy as they were in the water (it had made Yao Zhi want to claw the fucking walls, how astoundingly slowly they swam), he was still wary to launch an upfront attack. The guy had armed himself, after all.

He... he might have not thought things through as much as he thought he had. Because he was also wary of launching a backstabbing attack on them, to be honest. Yao Zhi felt he had to sort of say something to them first, let them know why they were dying. It felt... wrong to just butcher them without a word, even if they were vermin who deserved what was coming to them. Also, he didn't know what they were doing in that room; maybe they had spotted him and they were trying to ambush him. 

“So, yes, I think I need to set a trap,” he murmured under his breath, “just in case. Where am I, where am I...”

Problem was, this wasn't a section of the palace he was familiar with. It was Zakuro, the romantic fool, who was the one most interested in the old snares and tricks embedded in the stone walls, the one who knew which trap was where and what triggered it. He even insisted there were secret passages they hadn't been told about. Yao Zhi had never believed that part, though, Zakuro was just a bit of an idiot; but the traps were real, the whole Guard had been taught about them in spite of not being there a reason to use them anymore. And even if the specifics of this particular wing escaped him, if he remembered correctly, there were some common features in all the corridors, vestiges of an age where attacks were to be expected and repelled. 

Maybe... yes, he could see the hooks. They were small but definitely there. They would suffice. Much better than the old, mechanical traps that were bound to make a ruckus. He could surely tie some wire and set up a trap himself. Only, he didn't have access to several meters of wire right now; it wasn't the kind of thing you just had hanging on your belt on any given day.

What to do, what to do...

Okay, he could revisit the idea of using the old mechanisms of the palace. He could try the sconces and see what happened. Yao Zhi swam closer to the lights, ready to try. He then paused.

No, that was a lousy idea. If there was something he didn't want, was to be remembered in the books of history as the one guard who beheaded himself after tampering with what he should have left well alone.

Yao Zhi felt the seconds passing by, a mental clock ticking away impatiently in his head. He was wasting precious time. He didn't know how long the selkies would stay in the room. He didn't know where they were headed after this. And he just couldn't afford to be caught floating like an idiot in the middle of a fucking corridor. Maybe he should...

“Shit.”

He was stalling. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing, that was the problem. So he clung to any crappy idea his brain threw at him in the hope of finding a good way to avoid a direct fight, but the truth of the matter was that the fight couldn't be avoided, could it? And the more ready he was for it, the better.

“Old Yao Zhi, this is not the time to make stupid decisions and to fuck up, grow some balls, you know you're brave, you're awesome, you got this” he muttered to himself as he slowly swam closer to the door, trembling hands drawing carefully, silently, his service weapons. He gingerly pressed his back against the wall. The door was ajar but, luckily, he was in the leg of the corridor that had more of a blind angle to people coming out, due to the position of the hinges. His gills fluttered with the increased flow of water. Now he just had to wait and be ready to strike. It was okay to ambush them like this, it was necessary, it was the best chance he was going to get to be a hero. He tightened his grip on the handle of his blades. “Fuck, they're not people, they're damned seals, it's okay to kill them, they're evil, they don't feel shit like we do.”

“It's a bad habit to talk to yourself out loud when you're planning on killing someone, man. You never know who could be within earshot.”

Yao Zhi startled so badly that he hit his head against the wall. He barely had the presence of mind to repress a shriek. 

There was a... a human? A selkie? He was casually leaning against the wall on the far end of the corridor, one leg planted firmly on the floor, the other one propped on the wall. His bright red hair curtained his face and hid off his expression. He seemed to be opening a small plastic box. He took what looked like a white piece of... something and put it in his mouth, returning the small box to the front pocket of his jeans.

“And of course they feel shit, asshole, we all do,” he said, pushing away from the wall, hair floating away from his face to reveal a grimace of disgust as he chewed, if at Yao Zhi's reasoning or at the taste, Yao Zhi couldn't tell. “Man, I would kill for a real smoke right now.”

 _I don't have any_ , Yao Zhi's mind automatically provided, in case the guy meant it literally.

Maybe he should have said it aloud, because the guy extended an arm as he came closer-- much faster than the other selkies, Yao Zhi absently noticed-- and some weird-ass spear appeared or, or maybe it was a shovel or... okay, no fucking idea what that was, but it sure as hell looked like a weapon, one the guy knew how to use.

“Shit,” Yaoi Zhi muttered just before the half-moon part of the spear detached itself from the shaft and flew towards him.

He didn't want to die. Not today, preferably not ever. He just didn't want to die. But the thing was that he wanted to fail and to keep on being a fucking loser even less. He was fed up. It was just so fucking unfair, so terribly unjust.. the damned universe owed him, it did, it really, really did. And he had been so, so close...! And now this. Just... no. Fuck, no.

Yao Zhi suppressed the urge to cry because this was not the fucking moment. So he just tensed his jaw and let the anger overcome him as he raised his short sword and with a loud, mighty _clang_ , hit the approaching blade with all the strength that he had. He managed to deflect its course in the nick of time, but the impact hurt like a bitch and sent his sword flying towards the other end of the passage. 

Still cursing the fucking fortune that wouldn't smile at him even after everything he had fucking done, he passed his knife to his dominant hand and charged against the redhead. 

This was not butchering, this was self-defense. This fucking asshole had chosen the wrong fucking day to mess with him.


	87. Chapter 87

_Shit, shit, shit_ , Gojyo thought as he frantically twisted to avoid a knife in the ribs.

Problem was, merpeople were fish; they weren't strong but they were agile and lightning fast in the water. And Gojyo's weapon was long range; if he didn't hit them from a distance, the moment they got up and close, his shakujou was a crappy choice. And this guy was already up and close.

 _Fuck_ , he thought just before dropping his weapon and spinning fast, sending a couple of kicks in the general direction of the fucker's head. The first didn't hit home, but the second made impact and caused the asshole to back off for a second. That was the merman's first mistake. He was probably not used to fighting people with two legs; he should have pressed his advantage when he had it.

Gojyo summoned the shakujou again and widened his stance, feeling his feet touch the floor. Not that it would do much for his balance in the water, but it would still help him to brace himself for the next attack, providing him with a surface to propel from. 

Thing was, Gojyo was no stranger to fights in the water, and he was more than familiar with knife-wielding goons. Mixing both was a new experience, though, one Gojyo didn't really care about because knife fights were all about dodging, minding the distance and timing your counterattack, and his otherwise fantastic footwork was useless when fighting in the water against an honest-to-God motherfucking merman. He was toast if he couldn't keep the siren at bay. So he grabbed the shakujou as a spear instead of his usual method and pointed the sharp blade to the guy, moving it and feinting constantly so that the merman couldn't find a way through in the narrow corridor. 

The siren dodged effortlessly Gojyo's thrusts but, try as he might, he didn't manage to get past the blade. Gojyo pushed forward, searching for an opening, waiting his chance. The merman jerked away, to one side, to the other, eyes always fixed on him, also waiting for the right moment to strike.

 _Shit_ , Gojyo repeated in his head, keeping up the swift, erratic movements. He had to break the impasse, he was the one with the worse odds if the fight went on for too long. The moment he got tired and the merman got near, he was done for. And what the hell was Hakkai doing? Even a deaf dormouse would have come out by now with the kind of din they were making. Not to gripe, but Gojyo could really use the help right now.

Because that's the thing, he knew for a fact that Hakkai and Kanan were in there. He had been following the merman since the moment he had spotted that elusive movement at that fork; after turning the corner, he had seen a fish tail disappearing through another side corridor. He had thought that following the only guard that seemed to be awake in the whole place would be a sure way to get out of the fucking labyrinth, so he had hurried after him. There had been no need to go fast, though, the guard hadn't been rushing or anything. Because he had been, in turn, following a couple of people who didn't swim all that fast. A couple of very familiar people. Who had gone into that room and weren´t. Fucking. Coming. Out.

Gojyo decided that it was time for the Shitty Decision of the Day. He was a gambler, after all.

He feinted again. And again. In one direction, and another one. Erratically, not making conscious decisions, not letting it become a pattern. It came easy to him, this not thinking. Or that's what Sanzo used to say.

The guard kept his distance.

Gojyo thrust.

The guard swam back, but he then tried to take advantage of the long movement to go past the blade through the other side of the corridor.

Gojyo was expecting it and blocked his way. He thrust again, the horned points of the crescent barring the laterals and leaving only retreat as an option.

And so, the guard swam back again, a bit further away than before.

 _Now_ , Gojyo thought.

The crescent detached.

The half-moon flew, fast as lightning, towards the guard... who ducked under it with ease and, grinning like a madman, lunged forwards, quick and agile, knife at the ready and eyes on the prize, exhilarated at the free way the flight of the blade had given him.

Gojyo pulled, hard and fast.

The crescent flew back and hit the guard from behind with a quiet thud. The blunt end of the blade didn't cut him, but it collided with enough force on his shoulder to hit a nerve and make the merman drop his knife. 

Gojyo only had one chance, the merman was much faster than he and he was too close; if he took the knife again, Gojyo was dead. So he dropped the shakujou and back somersaulted to hit the guard with the strongest kick he could, not giving him the time to think, to gather his bearings, to locate the knife again. Gojyo felt his foot making impact on something hard, but the adrenaline helped him to ignore the pain. The kick made the merman spin backwards. Gojyo didn't waste a second and lunged after him, gripping him in a hold before the guard could orient himself and escape his grasp.

The guard buckled like a fucking wild horse, but Gojyo was good at holds and he got him pretty much immobilized from the waist up. He just had to lock his legs around... aah, yes, he got him good.

But now, well, they were at an impasse again, right? Gojyo couldn't knock him unconscious when he needed his four limbs to prevent the merman from freeing himself and cutting Gojyo's guts out.

So, what the fuck was Hakk--?

Gojyo's thoughts stopped dead. Their fighting had brought them in front of the door. When Gojyo raised his head, he saw inside the room. Only inertia prevented him from loosening his grip on the guard. Because, in there, amongst the boxes and the junk, Hakkai was passionately kissing Kanan. 

The first gut-reaction was a pang of jealousy. It... it was not the most noble feeling, and on some level Gojyo knew, fucking knew he would always come second in Hakkai's heart but... shit, it was still hard as fuck to have your nose rubbed in it like that.

The second was slightly more down to Earth. Oblivious-- and probably uncaring-- of what was going on in the room, the guard redoubled his struggle to get free and Gojyo had to renew his efforts in keeping him fucking still.

 _Really?_ Gojyo thought then. _Now? Here? Are you guys for fucking real?_

And it was then, when he wasn't even looking at them anymore, too concentrated in controlling the guard, that he realized there had been something weird in that kiss. Something about the posture, about their expressions: Kanan's slack, Hakkai's anguished, it felt... off. Gojyo raised his gaze again, looking inside the room above the merman's wriggling head. That's when he saw it.

There hadn't been blood, that's why he hadn't noticed at first, but the way Hakkai's arm was supporting Kanan's shoulders... that wasn't the way you held your lover, that was how you kept someone from falling back after a frontal hit. And there, nearly hidden by Kanan's body, buried in her midsection, was the knife. And Hakkai's hand, tense around its handle. Kanan's arms lost the little strength they had left and fell to her sides. 

_Oh, oh_ , Gojyo thought.

Okay, no idea what the fuck was going on, but one thing was clear: a crystal figurine was going to be more useful to Gojyo than Hakkai for the foreseeable future, and a shitload less fragile, too. It would even show better survival instincts too, most probably.

This... whatever 'this' was, was not good. It was actually a gigantic shit, if Gojyo ever saw one, about to hit the fucking fan. Well, now it made sense that Hakkai hadn't come out, he wouldn't even if the whole place was crumbling down on him; he had selective focus like that.

The last thing Gojyo saw before he forced himself to focus on the urgent problem in his literal hands, was Kanan's body dissolving, turning to sand, only a solid piece of something remaining in the middle while the loose grains floated slowly down to the floor.

The guard had stopped in his struggle, maybe horrified by the scene-- Gojyo could only see the back of his head, no way to know what the merman was or wasn't looking at-- maybe trying to pull off some trick. Gojyo neither knew nor cared. He just took the chance to let go and punch him in the temple. 

The guard seemed dazed, but the hit didn't knock him out. Before he recovered, Gojyo called his weapon and swung it full force against the guard's head. The shovel end hit it with an ugly noise, the blow strong enough to reverberate across the metallic shaft to Gojyo's arms. Gojyo winced. The guard got thrown across the corridor by the violence of the impact and, after hitting the wall, he fell softly to the floor. If he wasn't dead, he certainly was out cold and would remain so for a while. 

Gojyo frowned at the body for a second. Shit, but he hated blows to the head. 

Sighing, he then turned towards the room. Hakkai was still standing there, paralyzed, knife still poised to strike, the other hand at chest level in a tight fist, like gripping something. Eyes wide but unseeing. It hurt to see him like that.

“Hakkai...” Gojyo tried.

He got no answer. Not unexpected, but... Gojyo hesitated. He didn't know what that had been. If it was Hakkai being forced by a spell from which he had just woken up, if he had discovered that that wasn't Kanan after all and he was exacting his vengeance, or if there was a third or a fourth possibility too far-fetched for Gojyo to come up with in such a short time-span, but the fact was that they were in enemy territory and couldn't stay here until Gojyo found out.

“Hakkai,” he tried again.

The place was eerily quiet after the fight, only the soft currents making the most subtle watery noises.

Gojyo didn't know what to do. He eyed the guard, just in case he stirred, but nope, he was still out like a light. Gojyo preferred to think he was still alive, but he couldn't know for sure. He'd rather not find out; it wouldn't change anything. 

He looked at Hakkai again. The man hadn't moved, he probably hadn't even blinked. Maybe Gojyo should slap him or something to shock him out of his funk? Shit, to be honest, Gojyo didn't feel able to do it. It felt... wrong. Also, Hakkai still had a knife in his hand and he obviously wasn't of a sound mind right now. Gojyo would rather keep his distance at the moment.

“Hakkai...” he insisted.

And, in fact, the corridors were so silent now that it wasn't so hard to detect a new source of noise. Gojyo turned and looked at the corridor again. He couldn't see anything, but the sound, that had started low, nearly indistinguishable, seemed now to be steadily growing louder. Someone was coming. Someone confident enough in their right to be there not to try a stealthy approach.

“Oh, fuck,” Gojyo murmured, totally unprepared to face whatever it was, “let it be no more guards, please. Hakkai... Hakkai!”

Because it had been hard enough to beat just one, and whoever was coming, they were not alone. Unless they were talking to themselves with different voices. Gojyo could hear the murmuring now. Not good.

He looked at Hakkai, still deeply in shock. He looked back to the corridor, biting his lip. Nothing there yet, but well, Sanzo and Goku wouldn't be talking out loud and alerting everyone of their presence, it couldn't be them. And if they weren't his friends, they were sure to be his foes. 

“Hakkai...! Fuck, Hakkai!” Gojyo was as loud as he dared to, but he still got no response. If he hadn't seen him stabbing Kanan with his own eyes he would have thought he was also asleep in a trance. “Hakkai, damn you, wake the fuck up!”

The corridor was still deserted, but the sounds kept getting near.

They were almost there.

“Shit, fuck, cunt, motherfucking-- Hakkai!” he whispered, urgently as fuck, glancing back and forth between Hakkai and the goddamned corridor.

The noise was coming closer.

Hakkai didn't react.

There was a very conspicuous body lying in the corridor, right outside the room. 

If Gojyo tried to hide with Hakkai inside the small storage space, there was no way the guards (if they were guards, and chances were, they were) would overlook the body of their comrade and neglect looking around for his attacker. And if they checked inside the room and found them... well, Hakkai was in no condition to fight, not in a rational way, not avoiding being killed in the process. 

And so, Gojyo promoted his previous gamble with the guard to 'fantastically good idea' (it had turned out all right, after all) and decided that the Shitty Decision of the Day was the one he was making now. But, well, needs must and all that crap. 

Time to act.

Without warning, Gojyo slammed the door of the room closed, put the bar in place making it look locked from the outside and hurried to the end of the corridor, opposite to the one where the sounds were coming from; when he reached the fork, he turned towards the passage again and waited until... ah, yes, here they were. And yep, they were mermen, guards.

They paused when they saw Gojyo, utterly bewildered. 

Gojyo felt the urge to coquettishly wave his fingers at them and maybe send them a kiss or two. What the hell, why not. He did it.

The guards (at least there were thankfully only two of them) looked at each other, far more confused than before. They then spotted the body. Gojyo knew because they fucking pointed at it. 

Sure that he had gotten their attention and aware that they would swim much, much faster than he, Gojyo dropped the charade and swam away like there were armed motherfucking sirens on his heels.

 _Fuck_ , was the word that came unbidden to mind as he rushed until his lungs burned. The word, because the image, that was of Hakkai.


	88. Chapter 88

Seconds slowly trickled by, but nothing changed. 

Ready, expectant, Kougaiji's squad repressed the urge to fidget in impatience.

No sound came from the corridor, no more flickering of the light or fluctuating of the currents. He hadn't been seeing things, though, and he knew that Yaone hadn't, either; he trusted her with his life. That meant that whoever was in there was also alerted to the rebels' presence and was taking a similar defensive stance, waiting for them to make the first move.

 _Nothing ventured, nothing gained_ , Kougaiji thought.

No more time to waste playing chicken.

Kougaiji signaled.

They charged.

Sword at the ready, heart braced for the most than probable prospect that he would be fighting merpeople he knew, guards he had had under his command before, Kougaiji turned the corner.

There, in the middle of the corridor, instead of the queen's army trying to ambush the small group of rebels, there were only a human kid and... what seemed to be a giant deepstaria jellyfish. Who was pointing at them with an extended arm. 

Kougaiji frowned at the unexpected view but didn't slow down, unwilling to lose momentum.

The deepstaria jellyfish shot his gun with a loud bang. The bullet went wide, though, it just hit the ceiling as the kid, Yaone and Dokugakuji yelled at the same time, as if they had rehearsed it beforehand:

“Sanzo!”

“I've seen it, stupid,” the jellyfish grumbled to the kid, “that's why the shot didn't hit.”

“Halt!” Kougaiji commanded, voice loud and firm.

The rebels stopped their advance at once-- albeit not without a big dose of confusion-- disciplined enough to obey without question and mindful of their drawn weapons when combined with the closeness of the vulnerable bodies of their companions. The spike of adrenaline caused by the charge was difficult to manage after the sudden stop. The guards quickly eyed at each other, checking if their comrades knew what was going on without losing their focus on the potential enemies who were literally standing, of all things, in the middle of their palace. 

The deepstaria had lowered his arm, sure of the kid's and his own safety. 

“You've taken your damned sweet time,” he said, swimming clumsily closer, “bring us to the hall.”

Most of his men scowled, affronted by the audacity of the jellyfish to first scold and then give orders to their prince. Kougaiji could see through the corner of his eye that Dokugakuji was rolling his eyes and Yaone shaking her head, but Kougaiji didn't bristle at the disrespect. Dignity didn't really depend on how others treated you, after all, but on how you behaved and carried yourself. It had been his mother who had taught him that. 

Kougaiji signaled again and the rebels, with more or less disgruntlement, sheathed their weapons.

“This way,” he said, skipping superfluous greetings. “We have much to discuss.”


	89. Chapter 89

Sanzo hadn't been in a particularly good mood before. The day had started badly, had turned worse, had reached previously unrecorded shitty levels and, after putting up with Goku's cheerfulness, Gojyo's snark (and sheer, insufferable existence), after being soaked, nearly eaten, nearly cleaved in half and totally prevented from smoking, now he stood at the doors of the place where a Great Old One was being summoned, armed with his gun, his sutra, a stupid monkey, a handful of sirens and his bad temper.

He had been forced to come to R'lyeh unprepared, Hakkai was missing in action, Gojyo had gotten lost in the palace and, with his powers curtailed, Sanzo was supposed to face the mermaid queen, her army of cultists and the Outer Gods.

Great.

Sanzo didn't think things could get much worse than this.

“Let's get ready,” Kougaiji ordered.

The sirens started to tie yellow ribbons around their foreheads. Sanzo ignored them, listening to the chanting inside, trying to find out how close to completion the ritual was.

“Cool!” Goku said. “Is that some kind of traditional battle dress for merkind? Like war paint?”

“No, it's not,” Kougaiji explained as he finished the knot, “it's just that there's going to be a lot of chaos in there, so all the members of the rebel faction are to wear a yellow bandana so that we can tell apart who's to be stopped and who's helping. It's a bright color and no member of the merfolk has it naturally either on hair or tail, so it's bound to stand out.”

“Oooh, that's a great idea,” Goku enthused, “like in football! I also have a gold band around my head, see? So you can tell I'm also on your team.”

 _You have goddamned legs and swim like a rock, no one is going to fucking mistake you for a cultist_ , Sanzo thought as he started chanting under his breath, gathering his power.

The prince was a kind, noble merman and Sanzo was sure he would humour the monkey, though.

“Kou,” Dokugakuji said in a low voice.

“Kougaiji-sama,” Yaone called.

The prince's friends were on opposite sides of the group. They wouldn't have been alerted by the same threat. 

“Draw your weapons,” Kougaiji ordered.

Without interrupting his quiet chanting, Sanzo looked at the corridors that converged in the entrance to the hall. There seemed to be sounds and disturbances from the one to their right, the one Dokugakuji was facing; his weapon, the only long sword Sanzo had seen the merpeople wield, gleamed in his hand as the broad shouldered merman followed his prince's command. But there were also noises coming from the corridor to their left, the one Yaone was turned to, hands full of little darts that Sanzo supposed were dipped in-- or maybe contained in their hollow shafts, Sanzo couldn't tell from a distance-- some sort of water-resistant chemical, most probably a tranquilizer and not a poison, seeing that they were fighting their own people. Sanzo didn't check the corridor they had come from, the one to the center, but he was ready to bet that there would be someone coming that way, too.

Either the caster of the spell had lifted the enchantment or was dead, because it looked like the sleeping guards had regained consciousness all at once and were on the hunt for intruders.

As he finished his chanting and drew his gun, Sanzo couldn't help berating himself for his previous, careless, naïve thought-- he really should have known better-- of course things could get fucking worse.


	90. Chapter 90

Gojyo swam for his life, muscles straining, lungs and heart ready to burst. 

It had been a stupid idea; he had known that. He wasn't even aware of where the fuck he was, much less where he was going. He still swam on, choosing randomly which way to go in each intersection.

Gojyo didn't dare wasting precious time looking back to check, but he knew the guards were steadily closing the gap; they would reach him soon. He needed to make a decision: to keep on fleeing aimlessly or to stop and try to take them down with the shakujou before they got too close. But the larger the distance, the easiest it would be for them to dodge the crescent. And it wasn't probable that he would be able to get both of them down at the same time.

He was fucked.

He started to hear the noise before reaching the fork, there was someone in the next corridor too. No time to dwadle: if they were more guards, well, so be it. Hopefully they wouldn't be expecting him and he would be able to overcome at least one or two before they ended him.

He turned the corner.

The first thing he noticed when he entered the new passage, was a huge, white, jellyfi-- 

“Sanzo!” he exclaimed. 

Gojyo swam with renewed vigor. The monk was surrounded by... well, of course, the monkey, but also Jien, Yaone and a handful of others wearing bright yellow bandanas around their heads. Some of them were fighting other merpeople. It seemed to be quite the mess. But at least now he would have a chance. 

“Shit, who would have guessed one day I would be happy to see you, Baldy,” Gojyo panted when he finally reached them, invoking his shakujou. He nodded to Jien: “Bro.”

Jien was otherwise occupied and could only grunt in response, but Gojyo thought he had heard Sanzo mutter something that sounded suspiciously like 'imbecile'.

“Hey!” Gojyo protested, just in case, as he turned towards the corridor he had come from and sent the crescent flying with a spiral motion.

The guards that had been pursuing him had paused, wary, to assess the new situation and, hurrying to dodge the blade, didn't try to come closer just yet.

The place, Gojyo noticed, was rather like a hallway. More spacious than the corridors, it also contained more people. And more doors. He didn't have the time to admire the architecture, though, there was quite a messy battle going on, but he could see through the corner of his eye merpeople with headbands trying to fight without killing other merpeople without headbands. Goku's staff was by nature in 'stun' mode, so not much difference there, but even Sanzo was shooting at shoulders and not at heads. And the monk sort of glowed, the stole on his shoulders gently billowing. What the fuck was that. 

Gojyo drew the crescent in. He was about to sent it flying again when Yaone stopped him.

“Wait, please,” she said as she swam past him in the direction of the guards that had been harrassing him. Gojyo made a face. She reminded him powerfully of Hakkai, but also of Kanan, and he felt there was something wrong allowing her to face the guards in his stead, letting her put herself in danger to protect Gojyo and not the other way around.

She did something, though, something quick, that without getting too close to the guards made them gradually slow down, more and more, until they went quiet and floated down peacefully to the floor. It wasn't the same sleep they had been in before, though, this looked natural. The mermen had their eyes closed and everything.

By the time she came back, the skirmish in the hallway was dying down. Blood muddled the waters, but it wasn't an alarming amount. Some merpeople sported cuts, some were unconscious, some seemed to have surrendered... Gojyo left the sirens take care of their own business and swam to Sanzo, who was, in turn, clumsily advancing towards the big doors on the other side, the monkey, as always, watching his back.

“I found Hakkai,” Gojyo said when he reached the monk. “Are you fucking glowing?” If they all survived this clusterfuck of a mission, Gojyo was not going to let him live this down.

“Where is that fucking idiot,” Sanzo asked, tonelessly, his radiance getting more and more intense the closer he got to the doors.

A guard without headband got too close to them for Gojyo's comfort and he swung the shakujou, shovel-end first, to knock him away. Goku hit the poor guy next with his nyoi-bo, sending him flying back, most probably out cold. Maybe the monkey was right and they made a great team.

“Ehm... indisposed,” Gojyo replied.

Sanzo actually growled at that.

“Okay, no time to wait for him to refresh his make up, we're doing this...” and with that, the asshole actually kicked open the door to the throne room, “... now!”

So, it wasn't okay to use magic to break a damned portcullis but it was apparently fine to kick down a door for a fucking dramatic entrance. 

Making a valiant effort not to shake his head, Gojyo, with Goku also trying to repress an amused smile, followed the monk inside.


	91. Chapter 91

Concentrated in the last segment of the ritual, arms once again raised in prayer, Gyokumen ignored the ruckus outside and the growing disquiet in the audience. She was nearly done.

Then the doors burst open and, with an eye-roll, she couldn't help thinking: _what now_.

Safe in the knowledge that no one was looking at him, Ni laughed.


	92. Chapter 92

“I need you to do something for me,” she had said. 

Hakkai had nodded slowly, dread tightening its grip on his heart. He had taken her hand again at some point. It had been cold. Hakkai hadn't been able to pretend anymore that it had been only because of the cold water around them.

“I... gosh, this is hard...” Kanan had paused for a while then, fighting to find the best way to breach the subject. “You know I love you, do you not? I love you. I've always loved you. I'll always, always love you. And... I know it doesn't really show, because the things I've... because I'm always hurting you, and I know you're not big on words, that the way you always use them to say things you don't mean makes you wary of using them to tell important truths, but you have to know that I'm not... you have to know that I mean it. I love you.”

She had paused at that, looking at him. She had looked anguished, but not afraid anymore. Hakkai hadn't been able to decide if he had been comforted or frightened by the realization.

“But...” Kanan had continued, swallowing in what was nothing more than a nervous, useless gesture there under the sea, “if there's something I've learned, is that, sometimes, love is not enough.” She had chuckled at that. “Who would have thought, huh? That one day, I'd be the one to say...” 

Her voice had broken a little then. Hakkai had just stood there quietly, silently holding her hand without trying to interrupt her.

“But I am,” she had said, “I'm saying that now. Because I'm not... I'm not really me anymore. You think I am, but I am not. I'm not me. And I can't...”

Kanan had paused again, blinking hard, trying to push the words out of her mouth. Her hand, their only point of contact, had tightened around Hakkai's.

“Those years we were together...” she had said at last, “they feel like a dream. The best dream. I was happy with you, Gonou, really happy. You made me happy. I need... It's just... I... I want to have that dream again, I really want it. But for that, I need you to put me to sleep.”

She had tried to look at him then, maybe to let him know that she was sure of her decision or perhaps to ascertain he had been understanding what she had been asking for, but seeing Hakkai's contorted face had made her avert her eyes again.

Kanan had opened her mouth to say something else but no word had come out of it. She had closed it. She had shut her eyes and tried again.

“I also want you to know that, even though I hate that... I mean, even... in spite of everything, I am glad I had this chance to see you again. I wanted to talk to you and apologize properly-- no, not for that, let me finish-- not for what I did unwillingly, but for what... what I decided on my own, for... well... for giving up, back then. That was... I had to, I really had to, but I know I hurt you deeply and I... that's what I'm actually apologizing for, for breaking your heart so cruelly, for doing it in front of you, for making you see, but... I... it's... you have to understand, I couldn't...” she had exhaled then, like a half-aborted laugh, like trying to explain something that she had considered obvious but had known nobody else would understand because it hadn't happened to them, “...it was in me,” she had said then very quietly, “I could feel it, growing, feeding on me, unwelcome and unwanted and disgusting, inside my body, and I... I wasn't about to bring that to the world, and look at it everyday and think and remember and know and relive and... I couldn't, I really couldn't, I--”

“Kanan, I understand,” Hakkai had lied then. He was good at it. He had even been moderately sure that he had had his face under control. Kanan hadn't tried to look at him again, though. But still, he had fought to keep his expression as serene as he could. For her.

She had inhaled again to be able to keep on speaking.

“But the thing is that, when I... when I did that, I died. For real. And... and that hasn't changed. They brought me back, but that's not... I'm not...” she had then looked at him with agony on her face, “Gonou, I'm dead. I'm dead. And the first order they gave me when they woke me up was not to try to go back to resting again. They were awfully specific putting that binding in place, I haven't been able to find a way around it. So that command stands and I can't do this myself. But that doesn't mean I'm alive, I am not. And Gonou, I am so tired...”

Hakkai had observed with dismay that Kanan had stopped vacillating, she hadn't been stuttering anymore.

“And I know I'm selfish, and horrible and this is actually more terrible than what I did to you last time, but I need your help, Gonou, please, please, I'm sorry, I'm awful, I know, but--”

“I'll do it,” Hakkai had interrupted her then, before Kanan's voice broke, eaten away by desperation. “I'll do it. I prefer it that way. I want to be the one to do it. I'd rather it be by my hand.”

Kanan had swallowed again, daring to look him in the eye once more. 

“Gonou,” she had whispered, reverently, gripping his hand.

“You mentioned three things. What are the other two?” Hakkai murmured, softly, gently.

Kanan had looked hopeful, calmer in a way. And still, she took a moment to choose carefully her words, struggling once again to find a delicate way to express what wasn't anything but brutal. 

“I have no right to ask this... any of this of you. But I...” she had paused a bit at that, “you've already grieved me once. You don't need to do that again. I'd rather... I want you to be happy, Gonou. For me. For yourself. That's my second entreaty to you. Please, be happy. I know your emotions are your own and I have no right whatsoever to tell you how to deal with... to tell you how to feel about this. About me. After. But... this is truly my wish. Get over me. Please. That's what I want.”

Hakkai had been doing his best, he truly had, but he had started to lose control of his features and it had become extremely hard to keep his face calm and not let it deform in a mask of pain. Listening to Kanan had felt like having melted lead poured into his heart. Hakkai had tried then to control at least his breathing, hoping it would help, but Kanan had seen his tormented expression and, like a feedback loop, her face had also crumpled in pain.

“And the last thing,” she had forced herself to keep on speaking, “darn, it sounds so stupid, but I'd like... I'd really like a kiss. A real kiss. You know what I mean.”

“Kanan...”

She had calmed herself a little bit again, enough to look at him with a sad smile. Hakkai had known then that she knew it was a difficult request for him. Hakkai had felt conflicted. Because he had really wanted to give her that, to give her everything, and he hadn't wanted her to think that he had been put out by the fact that she was technically not alive, or that anything that might have happened, anything at all, could have ever changed his feelings for her. But the thing was that he was still bound to his promise to Gojyo and, childish as it was to consider a lovers' kiss a breach on that oath, at least under these extremely special circumstances, he was still reluctant to betray Gojyo's trust. Not that Gojyo would have held it against him, Hakkai had been sure, but Hakkai had known Gojyo to have some deep-seated insecurities and he had hated the idea of adding to that. 

“Kanan,” he had tried to explain, “it's not that I--”

“I know,” she had interrupted with a wider smile. The kind that made her eyes nearly close. It was the kind of smile Hakkai always tried to pull off and never quite got right. Kanan's version didn't look creepy. She had always been warm where he was aloof. “I know it's not about me, I know it's because of Gojyo. And... Gonou, I... gosh, there are so many things I wanted to tell you... but time is getting short, isn't it?”

She had made a pause, then, and had squeezed softly his hand. Hakkai had said nothing, giving her space.

“I understand,” Kanan had said, at last. Hakkai had known that she meant it, he hadn't always been able to tell, but he had been sure this time. “You don't have to do that part. It's... unfair of me to ask, to you and to Gojyo. And, Gonou, you need to know this: I like him. I really like him. He's... not what I would have expected-- I mean, a smoker? Really, Gonou?-- but he's good for you, he's good. I like him. And...” she had chuckled a little bit then, “I get what you see in him... he's extremely fun to tease. And that gorgeous red hair, I'm so envious... I would have loved to have spent more time with him, he's lovely and... he's good for you and I really want you, both of you, to be happy. Darn, I'm repeating myself, am I not? And to think that I've actually rehearsed this conversation in my head a hundred times...”

She had been making such a big effort to smile and be cheerful that she didn't notice how it was actually hurting Hakkai to see her try so hard. But it was going to be the last time he had the chance to listen to her, so he had paid the utmost attention, drinking in every gesture, in every nuance of her voice, in every adorable tilt of her head. 

“So it's fine,” she reassured him again. “It really is. It' just... I have had a lot of time lately to think, and to remember and to plan. And I didn't... I didn't want to go like... I don't want... you don't know this, but it's been hard touching people... touching you. Everything is mixed up in my head and even if I know that I really want to be near you, whenever I try to get close I have to fight myself, I have to fight every instinct I have that compels me, that is alway whispering to me, even when I'm not paying conscious attention, that I must keep my distance... from everybody... even from you. It's been a constant struggle since I came back and I... I really wanted to overwrite that and leave with... with the knowledge that I've beat that, that I decided to let you in and that's what happened because I said so, because I wanted it that way. That I had that control back. But now... ha, ha... now I'm sort of manipulating you into it, am I not? You're so kind, and I'm always so selfish... but, Gonou, I understand, honestly, I do. You don't have to. Not even after this clumsy emotional blackmail. I'm very sorry to have pressured you like that, it was playing dirty. And I know I said I wouldn't apologize for this, but I'm also sorry I stole your hide, that was rude. And I'm sorry to ask so much of you, and I'm sorry that I'm sorry, because I know you don't like it and I might be rambling right now and I'm sorry about that as well, just--”

Hakkai had kissed her then. Passionately, with all he had. He had taken her lovely face in his hands and kissed her within an inch of her life. Gently parting his lips so that she followed and letting his tongue inside when she did, not a moment before, but not holding back after she had granted him permission.

Because that was the thing that Kanan hadn't totally understood. That Hakkai hadn't just been in love with the memory of their past, with the Kanan before, with the fond ideal that remained after time had filed away the roughness of reality. That, even after everything that had happened to her, she had still been very much her. That Hakkai's feelings for her hadn't magically disappeared. For her current, real self. For the Kanan who had fiercely taken guards down without having held a weapon in her whole life and for the Kanan who had had tea with her romantic rival on equal footing. For the Kanan who had lied and plotted against the masters that had enslavered her. For the tired and broken Kanan who had asked her lover, her brother, to kiss her and then kill her with his own hands, knowing what that would do to him. The selfish Kanan who had trusted him to be strong enough for the both of them, the one who, in spite of everything that had asked of him, still wanted him to be happy. Hakkai hadn't been able, had been totally unequipped not to love her, too. 

But that hadn't been what Kanan had needed to hear. She had been right, she had been dead. And she had wanted to rest. Any attempt of Hakkai to make her understand that she had still been very much her, even after all that had forced her to change, would have sounded as if he was trying to stop her, as if Hakkai had been judging her decision to give up, as if he had been asking her to stay. And Hakkai had refused to do so and make her feel even more guilty, so he had kept silent and had just tried to pour all those unvoiced feelings into his kiss.

And, in the meanwhile, as if it had been a part of the body of someone else, his right hand had slowly moved down and grabbed the knife.


	93. Chapter 93

Gojyo had taken part in bar brawls far more orderly and organized than the fucking pitched battle he was immersed in at the moment. 

Merpeople everywhere, lots of them, slippery as eels, some of them fighting other merpeople, some of them fighting Sanzo, some of them fighting Goku and some of them fighting him. And the funny thing was that most of them weren't even armed, but their sheer number and agility was driving Gojyo crazy to the point that he had started brandishing his weapon in twirling, pinwheel-like motions to keep the damned cultists at bay. Because they were the worst. At least the guards had the good sense to fear him, dammit.

Through his peripheral vision, Gojyo spotted his brother, with Yaone and a redhaired guy, weapons at the ready, swimming towards the center where the queen (Gojyo had assumed it was the queen because she had been wearing a crown, but maybe she was a high priestess or something) was grumbling gibberish and raising a mean-looking knife above her head, but then the scruffy-looking guy at the mermaid's side waved a hand in a dismissive gesture-- he had also been wearing the condescencing face to accompany it-- and they had been sent flying back as if kicked by an gigantic, invisible foot. 

Next had been Sanzo, shooting and chanting like a mad thing, glowing even more than before, like a sun inside the dark aquarium that the damned palace was. He had tried to shoot down the queen with those bullets that sounded like fucking cannons, but the scruffy guy had just put up a hand and it was like a barrier was stopping the projectiles. Gojyo disliked the scruffy guy on the spot. He looked like he was having fun, where everybody else was just desperately fighting for their lives or the lives of those they loved. Like he didn't give a fuck one way or another. Gojyo hated those kind of people. 

“Roach!” Sanzo's voice resonated above all the din. 

Caught in yet another impasse, Gojyo just wondered what the fucking monk could be asking of him at this particular moment, because he was having trouble as it was just keeping himself alive under the overwhelming assault of what felt like two hundred angry cultists, but then he saw the light reflecting on the queen's knife and he understood. 

The mermaid was about to let the knife fall.

Gojyo knew, without having to be told, that it was game over if she completed the damned ritual. 

But if he stopped twirling the shakujou, the fanatics would fucking eat him alive.

Fuck his life.

“Rather than the Shitty Decision of the Day, this is the Fucking Day of Shitty Decisions,” he groused under his gritted teeth as he took advantage of the momentum of the last twirl to release the crescent of the shakujou at the highest speed possible in the direction of the mermaid queen.

He could only hope that the chain was long enough to reach her before it was too late. And that the cultists would be quick and gave him a mostly painless death.


	94. Chapter 94

Humans, mermaids, selkies... all of them were like ants, Nyarlathotep thought, amused. Admittedly, Sanzo would have posed a threat before, yes, but after his fallout he just couldn't measure against the full power of an Outer God. Ironic, that the Earth he had been punished to save the first time around would also be his downfall this time. No, wait, that wasn't irony. Irony was the fact that, to save that very same Earth again, he had just brought it to its doom. To R'lyeh. To Nyarlathotep. As he had known Sanzo would. 

He had batted away the prince and his entourage as if they were annoying-- they were, a little bit-- and had stopped Sanzo's ethereally charged bullets. He hadn't brought them all here to let them stop the ritual, after all. 

And that's when he saw the glint. A metallic glint, coming out of nowhere, or rather, from the other side of the room. To be honest, Nyarlathotep hadn't totally understood why Sanzo had chosen to bring a lowly kappa, not even a full-breed, to the fray, not when he could have just freed Kthanid's avatar, so Ni had mostly ignored the river creature as unimportant, lacking any kind of power. 

And that was why the blade the guy had so desperately thrown managed to make impact.

Too late to stop it, Ni could only watch as the crescent brutally sank into the queen.

Ni frowned.

Gyokumen Koushu shuddered, eyes wide, breathing labored, but with a very dramatic blood-expelling cough that only worsened her injury, she managed to lower the knife after uttering the last words of the complicated summoning. She was stubborn, Ni had to give her that. But the wound was a serious one, the crescent's points protuding from her chest, so instead of buring the ritual knife in the princess' heart, as she should have, it just grazed her shoulder.

Ni narrowed his eyes, unsure if he should be bothered or thrilled by the setback. 

“Goku!!”

Ni raised his gaze to the scene around him. The embodiment of the Earth had stopped, paralyzed, its eyes vacant, while Sanzo desperately tried to shoot down the kid's enemies that, neither understanding nor caring what was going on, were now redoubling their efforts to bring the Earth down. 

Well, in the light of recent events, it was nothing if not convenient that Sanzo had brought the kid to him.

Nyarlathotep chose to be thrilled, then.

It was in that particular moment that Sanzo's eyes fixed on him. They were still purple, Ni couldn't help noticing when they widened in recognition. Sanzo actually growled. Ni just grinned, wide, showing teeth. 

With a deep, reverberating command, Sanzo released his sutra.

Oh, yeah. Definitely thrilled. 

The magic of the parchment was powerful, wild, indomitable; the sutra itself seemed to multiply, reaching out towards him in the shape of endless lines of written wisdom, intent in its mission of purifying, of cleansing, of casting light. 

Nyarlathotep raised his hand again, trying to absorb it.

“Om,” he said. 

The sutra resisted his pull. Sanzo had still too much energy and the sutra had natural affinity for the Elder Gods that had created it. Nyarlathotep just clenched his fist and threw his arm towards the right, deviating the parchment that, obedient, went back to Sanzo's shoulders when its magic was deflected.

Ni kept on grinning, undeterred. Apparently, Sanzo still thought he had a chance and started advancing towards him. Oh, thrilled didn't even cut it: Nyarlathotep was _delighted_.

“So you're still trying to oppose me,” he said, “how cute.”

Nyarlathotep snapped his fingers.

Barely four meters away from Sanzo, Goku's golden headband turned incandescent. Still Goku didn't react. Then, the headband went dark again and just broke in two with a muted 'crack', its divided parts falling slowly to the floor, their shiny surface scintillating, reflecting all the lights in the hall including Sanzo's own glow. 

And then, all hell broke loose.


	95. Chapter 95

It had been during one of their trips to the market. They had just liked doing the shopping together. But Kanan had this tendency to agonize over the fruit, taking ages to choose the best pieces, not too green, not too ripe. Hakkai had known that and, not for the first time, he had left her in front of the apple stand and had gone to fetch the meats. 

Their past might have been complicated, being rejected from a very tender age from their parents just to be raised by a herd that never said it overtly but always thought that there was something wrong with them. Which was why they had decided to move to land, where nobody knew them and they could pretend to be just a married couple of teachers from overseas, looking for a new home and a community they could be part of and contribute to. Young, polite, kind as they were, they had had no problem being welcome and accepted in the aging fisher village.

When Hakkai had come back to the stand, Kanan had very nearly made up her mind. He had just stood behind her because there had been a very old, very wrinkled old lady at her side.

“I think that if we choose a mix of Granny Smith and Ginger Gold we can make really delicious apple pie,” Kanan had said, grabbing his hand without looking at him. “What do you think?”

“I think you are definitely right, young lady,” a voice that sounded as if it came from beyond the grave had said, “but I'm afraid that my hand might not be the one you were intending to take.”

Kanan startled and turned to look at the old lady she had mistaken for Hakkai. For a second, she had just stood there, eyes like saucers. She had then looked down at their entwined hands. 

“Oh my goodness!!” she had squeaked, releasing the lady's hand as if it had burned. “Sorry! I am so, so sorry!”

She had then proceeded to bow and profusely apologize once and again while Hakkai had just laughed and laughed and laughed, his arms full of bags of groceries. The old lady had just smiled and patted Kanan's hand trying to reassure her that it was quite alright while Kanan, mortified, had just reddened more and more and kept on bowing.

Of all the things to remember, Hakkai couldn't tell, for the life of him, why it had been that particular memory that had come to mind. It was not their happiest moment, not even the funniest. It was just... Hakkai didn't know what. A stupid occurrence. Maybe something to be fond of, something very her. 

He must have fallen to his knees at some point, because that's where he was now: kneeling in the middle of the shabby storage room, his fist closed tightly around a single tile of Mah-jong. The only thing that remained of Kanan. The core of the magic that had sustained that existence that she had refused to call a life. It felt foreign in his hand, alien, but it was still the only thing he had left of her. It wasn't even warm. Its hard corners hurt Hakkai's palm. 

At least the first time, Hakkai thought in a daze, there had been a body. Something that had really belonged to her, that had housed her. Something he had been able to hug. Now he only had a lousy game piece in his hand, a piece he still pressed against his chest, but that didn't offer the slightest comfort. Just a little, unrelated chunk of bone and bamboo. And a handful of sand scattered around.

Hakkai screamed.


	96. Chapter 96

If there was something positive to be said about this whole Goku-turning-into-a-huge-ass-demon thing, Gojyo reflected, it was that the cultists had stopped trying to kill him with their bare hands. Hakkai always insisted-- probably sarcastically because he was a bit of a bastard, but Gojyo could never tell-- that it was important to find the silver lining in the face of adversity. Hakkai might mean it, though, because he was also a bit of a hypocrite (when facing adversity, Hakkai's first response was always to try and kill it; or maybe the second. He would probably smile politely first).

After Gojyo had sent the blade flying, he hadn't been able to see if it hit home or not, because what felt like two thousand fanatics had brought him down and tried to hit, strangle and scratch him to death. The last part was actually the worst because they had fucking claws and while Gojyo only had two hands to defend himself, they had about three million in total.

But at some point he had heard the monk shouting the brat's name and the cultists had paused for a second, like attuned to some broadcast Gojyo was missing because he had never been given the earpiece to get it. It was a bit creepy, but far better than being choked (and flayed) to death, so Gojyo didn't complain.

Wary of setting them off again, Gojyo hadn't moved much, he had just extended his hand to call forth his shakujou (yet again; it had been great forethought on Hakkai's part to make it summonable, because Gojyo was always dropping the damned thing) and turned to watch, from under the mass of bodies surrounding him, how the monk's stole turned into some kind of extensible, self-reproducing, ass-long shopping list. To be completely honest, even if he admitted that it was an impressive display, Gojyo hadn't understood what use some fancy paper could have under water, but as long as it kept the merguys distracted from mauling him, Gojyo would declare himself a fan.

But even if the cultists were looking in that direction, it didn't seem it was Sanzo they were seeing. Rather, they were focused on Goku, who was for some reason impersonating a statue pretty much like the cultists were, apparently tuned to the same radio station as they.

And that's when it happened.

Gojyo could hear the low crack from where he was, half sitting up on the stone floor. Then Goku's headband hit the floor.

Gojyo gulped, unsure of what to expect. There was a moment of quiet anticipation, the proverbial calm before the storm with everyone eerily quiet, most of all Goku, whose normally big eyes now looked larger than his whole fucking face. 

Then things-- which, in Gojyo's humble opinion, hadn't been running particularly smoothly before-- got weird. 

It started with the trembling. Something was shivering. The palace. The water. Okay, not 'something' then, _everything_ was shivering. More and more. People in the hall started to look at each other, some with thrilled expressions on their faces, some with frightened ones.

Then the cultists, of all things, postrated themselves, facing Goku. With their fishtails they made a really funny image. Gojyo would have laughed if he had been in the mood. But he wasn't, because the kid's hair was growing out. His nails, too. Gojyo finished standing up, his fingers tightening around the shakujou's shaft. Goku always beat his ass in the best of circumstances; it was the monkey who had taught him how to use his damned weapon, for fuck's sake. If the kid was turning into something powerful, something evil and old, Gojyo knew he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell to stop him. 

“I shouldn't have gotten up from the fucking bed today,” Gojyo grumbled.

Next he knew, the universe decided to prove him right.

With a violent gesture, Goku opened his arms and arched his back, letting out a loud roar. The water dilated and pulsed, as if the kid was the epicenter of an earthquake, an explosion. Gojyo had to brace himself to resist the push of the expansive wave, water rushing past his ears, his hair whipping wildly. When it passed, he looked again.

Gojyo blanched.

He raised his eyes. Up, and up, and up, following a bulky figure of... Gojyo couldn't tell, sixty feet of height? One hundred? A fucking lot. Goku's body didn't look human anymore, it was... well, green for starters; or rather grey, or brown, or something in between, or rather everything at the same time and... holy fucking shit, he had honest-to-god tentacles stemming from his head. And wings. He had wings. Not that the wings were the worst part, but still, wings. And slimy-looking skin. Ugh. 

_You're fucking ugly, kid_ , he thought, watching without blinking as Cthulhu finished waking up. The water washed away Gojyo's cold sweat, leaving an unpleasant feeling on his skin.

The trembling from before hadn't stopped, it just went on, rebounding on the stone walls around them, making the water vibrate, sneaking into Gojyo's head, into his soul; he realized just then that the shivering didn't only come from the outside; it was also he who was fucking shaking.

And the weirdest thing was that, even though the monster's form dominated the hall, he also mantained his shape as a long-haired Goku, his scrawny body barely higher than Gojyo's chest. Yet, somehow, his figure coexisted with that of the ancient god that reached nearly one hundred.. no, definitely much more than one hundred feet, it was larger than life. Which made no sense because the ceiling of the throne hall wasn't that high and it was impossible that this... whatever it was, fit inside without destroying the palace, but it somehow did and, well, Gojyo didn't understand what the fuck he was seeing and that was starting to give him a headache.

“Ooff...” he sighed, closing briefly his eyes, not feeling ready.

Goku roared again and stretched his wings, the long hair of his short human self billowing at the same time that his tentacles waved, his bald monster head turning to look around. He started to talk then, his voice a bass deep enough to make Gojyo's breastbone reverberate with each word. It was the same kind of strange language the cultists seemed to have been chanting in; the same chewing, guttural sounds Hakkai had made in his sleep. Gojyo didn't get shit of what was being said. 

Whatever it was, Cthulhu didn't wait for a reply and, eyes barely two narrow lines in his titanic head, he lifted one foot, deceptively slowly, to then let it fall at such a speed that Gojyo's eyes weren't able to follow the movement. It was as if time had skipped a couple of seconds. Gojyo felt his blood run cold when he saw a red cloud rise from under the monster's foot, the crunching sound of flesh and bone only slightly less horrifying than the screams of pain and terror of the merfolk. Cthulhu had stepped on a bunch of random bystanders: loyal guards, rebels and cultists in equal measure trapped under the unsurmountable weight of a god.

As if that had been the shot of a starting gun, the world was set into motion again.

And chaos reigned.

The cultists seemed to have entered some kind of new religious trance and either bowed and sang praises to their newly awakened god or swam towards him in fanatic fervour, flailing with their arms as they approached, colliding with the audience, the white of their eyes visible even from where Gojyo was watching between the spaces left by the bodies running amok. 

The rest of the merpeople were now shouting and fleeing, panicked, bumping into each other and against the cultists who were swimming in the opposite direction. None of them were really seeing where they were going, they were just trying to escape, their minds unable to cope with what was happening; their high-pitched screams a stark counterpoint to the Great Old One's deep rumbling. 

In the middle of the commotion, Jien's redhead companion started shouting orders and, seeing what the ritual had actually brought forth, most of the guards, wearing or not a headband, nodded and started to coordinate, following his instructions. At least the ones who weren't pissing themselves and frantically trying to get out of the hall. The Guard attacked the monster, but Cthulhu just batted them away as if they were nothing more than annoying flies. There was something preternatural in the speed of such a big creature; he shouldn't have been able to land those blows on the merpeople, so much more agile and fast than he was.

The center of the hall was deserted now, the queen was nowhere to be seen; a mermaid, either sleeping or dead, lay still, tied to the altar. Scruffy guy was... Gojyo hadn't noticed with all the tumult, but he must have been talking...? Fighting...? Interacting in some way with Sanzo, because he was just going away from him. Everything was so confusing that Gojyo's traitorous senses had made him believe that the guy was laughing. 

Sanzo himself seemed to be kneeling in the middle of the chaos, immobile, doing fuck all when Goku, when Gojyo, when the whole world needed him the most. 

Gojyo didn't understand anything. 

The Great Old One seemed to be enjoying himself, killing everything in his vicinity with the cruel joy of a child burning ants with a magnifying glass. But not only the ones trying to oppose him. He was also smashing, desmembering and just making explode with a single uttering of a rumbling syllable his own cultists, his supposedly loyal minions. The amount of blood in the water was making both seeing and breathing difficult at this point. The screams didn't decrease, every new victim, even the cultists who probably thought it was a great honor to be senselessly butchered by their god, screamed as if their souls were being ripped from their bodies when they were crunched and their corpses discarded.

Gojyo felt so fucking disgusted, powerless and useless he wanted to cry. 

Then Cthulhu paused in his slaughtering, as if he had seen something that had caught his attention. Slowly, he turned. Gojyo had a very, very bad feeling.

Amongst all the chaos, all the merpeople desperately fleeing and crowding the exits, the cultists praying or swimming towards their god, the guards fighting, the noises, the screams and the blood, there was something that stood out. Something too quiet in the middle of a whirlwing. Something that shone. Sanzo. And even if Goku wasn't Goku and part of him didn't even look like Goku, and the whole of him sure as fuck didn't act like him, he still seemed to feel some pull towards the stupid monk. Who was there, just kneeling, glowing like a beacon, probably in shock. A fucking sitting duck if Gojyo ever saw one.

“Fuck me,” Gojyo mumbled right before he started swimming fast, with all he had, desperate to reach Sanzo before Gok-- Cthulhu did.

The voice of reason whispered in his ear that there was no way he was going to reach the monk in time and that, even if he did, he was less than a shit to be stepped on against the power of an ancient god. 

With the ease of someone who had had a lot of practice doing so, he told the voice of reason to go fuck itself and just swam on.


	97. Chapter 97

Kougaiji-sama's voice rose to be heard above all the screams, yells and destruction that surrounded them.

“Retreat!! Retreat!!”

The prince himself wasn't moving back, though, so Yaone, alongside with Doku and a handful of rebels, stayed by his side. They all knew it was useless to fight a god. Escaping was the only viable option at this point, now that the monster was distracted. 

“Kou--” Dokugakuji started.

“I want you two to take Lirin and get out of here,” Kougaiji-sama interrupted, talking fast above the din around them. “Leave R´lyeh, find a new place. Regroup, search for help. Lead our people.”

Yaone's blood ran cold at what she was hearing. Kougaiji-sama was not including himself in that plan of action. He was obviously intending on sacrifying himself for... what, giving them five minutes of a head start?

“You are the Crown Prince,” Dokugakuji protested. “You take Lirin, we'll buy you time.”

“If I am the Crown Prince, then you'll do as I say!” Kougaiji-sama commanded. It was the first time Yaone heard him pull rank instead of reasoning with them. “That was an order! Go!”

“Kougaiji-sama--”

“Kou--”

“Go!!” the prince cut them short, starting to pull away from them. He then paused for a second to deliver his last words: “Do not fail me.”

Yaone wasted precious seconds watching as the prince swam away to his certain death, either with the aim of distracting the god from their escape or to give Sanzo the chance to wake up and contain the Great Old One, she neither knew nor cared. The one thing that was occupying her mind right now was everything she had never said, the things she had always believed were better kept inside, under wraps, the things that now burned in her throat. 

She had never intended to confess. She was content serving under her prince's command, knowing she was useful to him, that she was as close to Kougaiji-sama as her station was ever going to allow her to be. But she had thought she would have more time to be by his side, to help him. She had thought she would work under his orders her whole life. Quiet, faithful. Thankful, because she owed him everything she was.

But now... now she would give her right arm for the chance to tell him, just so he knew, just to let it out so that the knowledge that she wouldn't be able to do it anymore didn't make her heart ache the way it was doing right now. 

And those cursed parting words... Kougaiji-sama had known what he had been doing. Disobeying him now equalled to disappointing him and, if there was something that Yaone knew she couldn't stand, it was letting the prince down. She would rather die. Or rather, let him die. Which was pretty much the same thing.

“Yaone,” Dokugakuji said. 

Doku was right, Yaone knew. Her lips pressed in a determined line. There would be time later to regret and to cry and to lament all the lost chances and all the things that would always remain secret, the way they had always been meant to be. Now they had a mission they couldn't fail. Yaone would see to it. 

Without a word, because she didn't trust herself to speak at the moment, Yaone nodded and the remainder of the rebel squad swam like the devil towards the abandoned altar and the new heir of the Siren Crown.


	98. Chapter 98

“Shit, shit, shit!” Gojyo cursed as he frantically tried to get around all the bodies in his way.

A gigantic hand reached towards Sanzo. Gojyo was moderately close, but Goku had been standing pretty much by Sanzo's side before the transformation and that tentacled thing could move crazy fast in spite of its size. Gojyo wasn't going to make it.

“No!!” he shouted without slowing down, muscles burning, pushed far beyond their capacity. “Stop it!”

The green (gray? brown?) slimy hand started to wrap around the monk, slowly, as if mocking Gojyo, laughing at his useless efforts.

Gojyo summoned his shakujou again, knowing it would be for nothing.

The fingers of the god started to close.

Still too far away, Gojyo prepared to throw the crescent anyway when, suddenly, from the other side, a red-haired merman threw himself at top speed, sword first, against the palm that threatened to swallow the monk.

Gojyo allowed himself the tiniest hope: maybe the siren had some magic that could stop the Great Old One, or the collision in Sanzo's face would manage to shake the monk out of his funk, or... 

The merman was catapulted back to where he had come from at such a speed that he crashed against the far wall, taking-- and crushing-- Gojyo's nascent hope with him; neither the merman's sword nor his momentum had managed to even scratch the monster's skin. Gojyo could see the superimposed Goku that shared space with the huge god smirking in a way the tentacled head definitely wasn't able to do. No need, though, Gojyo could read his attitude perfectly well. The attack hadn't bothered him, it had just amused him.

Cthulhu reached for Sanzo again.

The merman had bought Gojyo a bit of time, he was close enough to be in range. This was his chance.

Desperately, with all the strength he had left, Gojyo threw the shakujou's crecent.

The half-moon flew.

There was magic from the Elder Gods imbedded in the blade; that was probably the only reason why the crescent managed to sink, tiny as it was, into the back of the god's hand.

Cthulhu wasn't a regular monster; he didn't cry out even if the small wound started to sizzle right away, he just struck with that same hand in a backslap that hit Gojyo full force and sent him flying back, pretty much like the redhaired merman but in the opposite direction.

Pain exploded in Gojyo's body as it spun out of his control. His mind didn't fare much better, disoriented by the fast movement and dazed by the blow. It had felt like being hit by a truck. He didn't even have the presence of mind to wish his bones hadn't been broken, he just focused on being able to breathe. 

The resistance of the water finally managed to slow him down enough to get his bearings and realize that he was too far away now, that there was nothing he could do, nothing he could try to stop what was about to happen: he was going to witness how that creature who was, in a way, still Goku, was going to kill the monk he utterly adored because Sanzo was still staring into space like a fucking idiot.

Gojyo couldn't stand it. He forced his pained joints to move again and swim back to them, knowing without a doubt that this time not even the long range of the shakujou was going to make a difference.

“Goku!!” he roared at the top of his lungs, not even registering how the salt water abraded his throat.

The god was reaching for Sanzo again. Calmly. Savouring it. Deaf to Gojyo's pleas.

In a last-ditch effort to stop the inevitable, fully aware that the chain wasn't long enough, Gojyo summoned and threw the whole shakujou, hoping against hope that it at least distracted the Great Old One or hit Sanzo's head and woke him the fuck up, Gojyo didn't care which. 

The weapon lost momentum half way through and fell harmlessly to the floor. With his heart climbing out of his throat, Gojyo saw Cthulhu's enormous hand enveloping the glowing monk.

Suddenly, a explosion sent the merpeople crowded at the exit flying back into the hall in all directions. More screams could be heard, more merpeople confused, panicked, not knowing how to get away. Even the stones seemed to moan and rumble, the doors destroyed by the burst. Cthulhu didn't seem to notice and started to clench his fingers, taking obvious delight in smashing Sanzo's delicate body in his fist. 

“GOKUU!!!!” Gojyo bellowed above the screams.

It was then that a huge, screaming projectile came out of nowhere and hit the creature at the speed of light. The god was violently pushed backwards, his fingers loosening and releasing the monk before they had the chance to fist and kill him.

Gojyo ignored the pain and kept on swimming to check if Sanzo was, indeed, still alive, when he processed what he had just seen. The projectile. That hadn't been a torpedo, as Gojyo had automatically assumed. It made no fucking sense that it was. It was organic, and that scream, that fucking, blood-curdling scream... Gojyo would recognize that calling anywhere. That projectile was a humongous elephant seal, mad as a raging bull, charging forward without giving a shit about what got in his way. Hakkai.

Gojyo's body stopped without his conscious input and, forgetting Sanzo, he turned towards the titanic fight going on to his right.

Hakkai wasn't... exactly Hakkai. Blanching, Gojyo realized that the mirounga was bigger than he usually was, that he kept growing and growing and changing shape and...

“Oh, fuck, no, come on, no...” Gojyo begged.

...a strange mirror image of the deity he was fighting overlapped Hakkai's body so that it looked like two Cthulhus were fighting each other inside a hall far too small to contain them. Undefined color, tentacles, wings... the whole set. They were like titanic twins, going at each other's throats. Only the shape of the avatars that coexisted with their godly selves posed a difference. Somehow, Hakkai must have also turned into an ass-huge demon when Gojyo wasn't looking and he was now trying to beat some sense into Goku. Literally beat. Because those punches did mean business.

Gojyo gaped as two ancient, disproportionately large gods wrestled fiercely in front of him, too fast to follow with the naked eye, but also slow enough for Gojyo to register what was going on. Which made no sense, really, but that was how Gojyo was perceiving it. 

The cultists who were still alive went even crazier and some of them started to convulse as the deities exchanged blows and, if Gojyo wasn't mistaken, also words in their rumbling, chewing, weird-ass language. The rest of the merpeople kept on screaming and shouting and crying and fleeing, the menace now doubled. The hall that couldn't really hold those cosmically big beings gave in to the inevitable and started to crumble under the savage violence the gods were bestowing upon each other. The ceiling started to fall, causing the merpeople to panic even more so that the sheer mass of bodies trying to escape at the same time clogged the exit.

As Hakkai and his indomitable fury made Cthulhu step back, they bumped into the dais where the throne stood and both the seat and the altar that had been placed in front of it shattered into pieces at the impact, sending slivers of stone and wood flying everywhere like dandelions seeds. Beyond the platform, Gojyo thought he saw some yellow smears fleeing before all the debris caught up to them. He couldn't be sure he had seen right and those were the rebel sirens and not some pieces of wreckage because there was too much blood and dust and rubble in the water already. He just hoped Jien was okay. He probably should also hope that Hakkai won the fight or something, but Gojyo was still assimilating his transformation into another fucking god of doom and couldn't think clearly.

A big rafter fell down from who knew where and, hitting the floor right beside him with a loud boom, shook him out of his reverie.

“Fuck!” Gojyo said as he instinctively crouched at the impact.

The world was ending and there he was, spacing out like an idiot...

“Sanzo!” he remembered.

It was when he was swimming back to the monk-- who, by the way, hadn't moved a fucking inch... it was a good thing they were underwater, his droopy eyes would have dried and fallen off by now if not-- that he saw it. It caught his attention because, well, that's what metal does when you're underwater. It glints and your gaze is inevitably drawn to the flash of light. Gojyo paused. He looked at Sanzo. Then back at the pieces of metal. Then back at Sanzo.

“Hm,” he decided.

Full of purpose again, Gojyo swam as fast as he could (which wasn't much because everything fucking hurt and he must have busted his shoulder or something because it wouldn't turn all the way-- if he managed to survive this day, Gojyo vowed never to whine again at delivery days) and collected the fragments of Goku's headband. He brought them to where the monk was still kneeling, glowing, completely stupefied.

“Sanzo, you have to fix this,” Gojyo said, pushing the pieces of metal into the monk's chest. “Sanzo.”

The monk was still catatonic and didn't react.

“Sanzo. Sanzo!”

Gojyo swore under his breath and hurried to better his grasp on the broken headband because the stupid monk was going to let it fall. 

“Sanzo, you son of a bitch, snap out of it!!”

Sanzo still didn't do anything to prove he was not a rag doll and Gojyo was starting to get fucking angry. What was with people going numb in his fucking face today? Couldn't they wait until all this shit was solved to give in to their fucking nervous breakdowns? He distantly remembered a movie about a plane. It had been a comedy. Sometimes Gojyo wondered what the fuck was wrong with his brain and the things that came to his mind at the least appropiate times. Or maybe not the least. Well, Gojyo didn't have much to lose at this point.

“Shit, I've been waiting for this moment from the second I met you and now that it has finally come I can't really enjoy it,” he cursed.

Gojyo slapped Sanzo. Hard. 

Sanzo's face was turned by the force of the hit, but he still didn't give any indication that he had even felt Gojyo's hand on his cheek. Gojyo was in the brink of grabbing his hair and trying again when he heard the murmur. Which was nothing short of a miracle, with all the ruckus around them.

“I lost,” Sanzo had whispered, “there's nothing I can do now.”

Gojyo felt a surge of blinding rage in his chest. Shit, he might slap the monk again just for pleasure.

“My ass there isn't,” he growled instead, pushing again the fragments of the headband into the monk's chest. “You can fix this. Fix this.”

Sanzo looked at him uncomprehending. Gojyo hadn't felt a stronger urge to fucking strangle him in his whole life, and that was saying something. 

“NOW!!” he roared.

Finally, fucking finally, Sanzo's eyes started to focus. Gojyo was too damn furious to even feel relieved. He just waited, nostrils flaring and mouth a straight, white line as the monk reached for the pieces of metal that Gojyo was holding against his body. Then, he started to chant.


	99. Chapter 99

In the past, Sanzo had wondered if the kappa was genetically unable to work up a bout of real anger. Maybe because the guy was always around Hakkai, who provided a stark contrast in that matter because the selkie's wrath was always barely hidden behind his annoying smiles. 

Gojyo, on the other hand, was too damn lazy to get angry. The only reaction he showed when irked was annoyance, words his only response. Snark and bravado. A childish sulk when that failed. Gojyo was too laid-back; he just wasn't prone to ire. Not even when sold out by a friend or axed by a parent. Maybe because he was good at understanding others and it was difficult to hate people when you knew why they acted as they did. The kappa took abuse just as naturally as other people drank water.

So it was mostly the intensity of his fury that had shaken Sanzo out of his shock. The other factor was the annoying notion that the kappa's utter stupidity and ignorance might be, as Hakkai had stated all along (although meaning something different altogether), Gojyo's biggest strength. Which, in turn, made it Sanzo's best shot (only shot) at the moment.

'They did not know it was impossible so they did it.'

Sanzo couldn't remember where he had heard that before, but it sounded pretty much like the kappa.

The asshole hadn't even waited for Sanzo to tell him the headband was ready; the moment it had stopped glowing and Sanzo's words had dried out, Gojyo had just grabbed it from his hands and swam away in ridiculously asymmetric strokes, body undulating in a way that purely earthbound creatures just weren't designed to do. 

_I can't stand that guy_ , Sanzo thought, out of nowhere, watching as the kappa kept on going until he got engulfed by the red, cloudy water, apparently oblivious to the fact that he didn't have half a chance to put the seal back in place.

It was not that Sanzo hated him, not exactly, just... they sort of clashed. All the time. But Sanzo could admit the kappa had some good qualities. Like his ability to keep Hakkai in check. Or his willingness to pay the price for whatever stupid shit he was always getting himself into. That was something they had in common. Sanzo sighed, hating the fact that he had confessed that much even to himself.

Because that was the thing. Decisions had consequences. Good or bad. That's how it was for everybody, mortals and gods. Everything had a cost. Sanzo had known what would happen the first time he decided to disobey the laws of the Elder Gods and Sanzo knew what would happen if he decided to do it again. But he hadn't been wrong before: Gojyo didn't have half a chance. Or, well, maybe he had. Half a chance, that was. Against one million. Lousy odds were better than no odds at all, but that still wasn't good enough for Sanzo, not with Goku's life on the line. Stupid monkey. So, if Sanzo, with the restrictions on his power in place and out of magic artifacts, still wanted the ball to land on his fucking number, he needed help from someone who could still rig the roulette.

Fuck, but if there was someone with whom he hated dealing more than the kappa, it was the fucking hag.

Feeling his eyelid twitch-- was this fucking day never going to hit rock bottom?-- he, once more, started to chant.


	100. Chapter 100

Trying hard not to think, Gojyo swam towards... well, towards. Instead of away.

 _The fuck am I doing_ , the insidious thought broke in in spite of Gojyo's best efforts when a severed arm just got in his way and he had to decide between skirting around it or just batting it away to swim through. _The fucking fuck am I fucking doing_.

The noise was still deafening, but at least it had changed its quality. Less shrilling screams and bodies breaking, more rumbling gibberish and inorganic crumbling down. Gojyo would have thought that it would be easier to advance now, with all the panicking merpeople out of the way, but with the racket the damned deities were making and the flurry of dust and debris they were raising with their cosmic fight, Gojyo just felt like he was trying to come in between two drunk elephants fighting in a bar haunted by a poltergeist. Only, the drunk elephants were motherfucking gods. 

Suddenly, a shadow entered Gojyo's field of vision and he gracelessly hurried to duck to the side just in time to avoid what had looked like a fucking asteroid. The sudden move aggravated his shoulder and Gojyo winced.

After a curse, he kept on swimming.

The closer he got, the weirder the strange dissociation between what he was seeing and what he knew was impossible became. How could he approach Goku's head when Cthulhu was so big that his head wasn't really inside the hall? Because Goku's superimposed figure wasn't reachable either, it was beyond Cthulhu's humongous body. And Gojyo knew, by first-hand experience, that Cthulhu's body was fully in this dimension, at least physically. Or something. Gojyo couldn't pass through it, Cthulhu was fucking solid and, honestly, Gojyo wasn't sure his bones would be able to withstand another blow like the last one.

Gritting his teeth, frustrated by his inability to figure out how to do what had to be done, Gojyo paused and tightened his grip on the headband. Magical seal or not, it didn't tingle or anything, it felt just like a normal, dead piece of metal. 

One of the huge beings (Cthulhu) grabbed the other (whoever Hakkai was at the moment) and sent him crashing against a wall that couldn't hold and disintegrated with the impact. The ceiling lost even more of the structure that supported it and started to fall down in earnest, causing rafters, stone blocks and assorted masonry to rain down on the wrestling gods, who didn't pay any heed.

“Shit!”

Gojyo dodged right before a big fragment of ceiling crushed him. More and more sections followed, the building groaning as it fell to pieces.

He anxiously looked at what was supposed to be Goku again. He was now holding Hakkai down, which meant he was in a more or less fixed position. 

It was now or never.

 _Fuck it_ , Gojyo thought. 

He started swimming again. His mind couldn't process this whole multidimensional shit with Goku being a god but still being Goku and not fitting in the place but still being inside it; Gojyo just wasn't able to see where the fuck the kid really was, and thus, in what could possibly be his lamest and most stupid idea to date, he just accepted reality for what it was (something beyond his grasp) and decided to close his eyes. 

_If there really is a god out there, I mean, one who isn't dead set on destroying fucking everything, this would be a great moment to help out_ , he prayed. After a couple of seconds, he added: _ehm, please_.

Still wondering what he thought he was doing, Gojyo, this time blindly, swam on.


	101. Chapter 101

“I see you've lost your sutra.”

“Don't,” Sanzo warned.

Kanzeon Bosatsu sighed. If at Sanzo's testiness or at the general situation, Sanzo couldn't tell.

“You know I can't, it's against the rules,” ze said.

“Nyarlathotep pissed on the rules,” Sanzo argued. “Just do it.”

They both knew it wasn't the same. The Outer Gods weren't bound by the same stupid burocracy that ruled the Elder Gods. Kanzeon Bosatsu, for once, did show some mercy and declined to point it out, just as Sanzo didn't bring attention to the fact that Kthanid was right over there, possessing a selkie, punching Cthulhu in what passed for his face. It was common knowledge that the rules the higher-ups came up with weren't meant to apply to themselves.

“I still can't intervene directly,” ze finally decided, “but I'll... offer some guidance, if you will. You'll take full responsibility, though.”

“Yes,” Sanzo spat, as if the word had a foul taste in his mouth.

Kanzeon Bosatsu laughed.

“You are really fond of this planet, are you not?” ze sounded so amused it was pissing Sanzo off. “That's lucky, because this is going to compound your sentence big time. You're going to be stuck here for a long, long while.”

Hir presence started to fade.

“All right, Nephew,” were the last words Sanzo heard from hir, “you owe me.”

Sanzo growled. 

His consciousness returned to the present moment, all the noises, the blood, the fucking building falling down on him, suddenly in focus again.

With the last shreds of his power, he conjured a barrier to keep the wreck away. He wasn't sure if he could actually get brained and die, even in this form, but he didn't feel like finding it out the scientific way. Not today.

He turned to the fight. The visibility was shit and the kappa couldn't be spotted, but Cthulhu was pretty hard to miss, even with all the rubble. That, and Sanzo always knew were Goku was. Always. Even if the kid was not himself at the moment, his essence was still linked to the Great Old One, they were one and the same, two faces of a coin. Sanzo had to focus on that, that Goku hadn't really disappeared. That he could still come back as himself if they all managed to flip that coin.

 _Fuck, this better work out_ , he thought.

His punishment-- which was about to be, at least, doubled-- wouldn't be so terrible with Goku around; whining, and saying that he was hungry, and fucking calling him all the fucking time. Admittedly, put like that, it was hard to see what was to great about the prospect, but if Sanzo compared it with Elysia, with all its stupid rules and its stupid burocracy and its stupid inhabitants and its stupid corruption and its stupid, mind-numbing, unbearable boredom...

Well, a semi-permanent exile on Earth didn't sound so, so bad.


	102. Chapter 102

Gojyo concentrated very hard on his other senses. That was easier said that done, because even though the fight had come to a temporary impasse, the palace was still giving out, the water pushed him in nonsensical directions and everything was full of dust, blood and shit. Metaphorical shit, that is. Thank God for small mercies.

Still, through all the noise, and currents, and particles floating around, Gojyo could still sense something. It was... like an undefined sensation, like a feeling. Not unlike this tingling he got when he knew he was going to win a hand at poker.

He had thought at first that the only thing that set those huge gods apart was the avatar they were kind of fused with, or whatever this thing of them being also Goku and Hakkai was. But now that he had his eyes closed, there was like... an aura irradiating from them. It was as if one of them caused a feeling of deep unease and the other one of calmness and... Gojyo didn't know how to define it... general well-being? Goodness?

Who would have thought. Not him, that's for sure. A fucking giant with tentacles was not the first image he associated to good vibes, to be honest.

But that's how it felt. 

So he supposed that was not the one he had to foist the headband on. Gojyo focused on the source of the uneasy feeling. If was almost like... dread. Yeah, that was it. Every bone, every nerve in his body was screaming at him to turn heel and get away. So Gojyo swam closer to it. He was shivering again. Gojyo once more adjusted his grip on the headband; this would be a terrible moment to drop it. Trying very hard to control the tremors, he kept on going, not knowing if he should open his eyes or if he should wait or if he should do something epic or mysterious or ritualistic or what. At least that horrible feeling had some sort of a directional pull; Gojyo was able to advance towards it because he could sense the dread increasing and decreasing with his position, as if he were playing a game of hot-and-cold with a deity that instead of saying aloud if Gojyo was getting closer, just made him feel it. 

Okay, Gojyo must be nearly there, because the sensation was intense now, it bordered on pure hatred and fear. There was obviously no lost love between the twin gods. Or maybe Cthulhu was just a tentacled ball of hate by nature. Funny that he was Goku and not Hakkai, Gojyo couldn't help thinking.

The dread was starting to feel overwhelming, but something told him that he was still not near enough. 

Gojyo gulped and swam closer.

 _Not yet, not yet_ , he thought, not knowing how he could tell.

And closer still.

 _No, not yet_.

And closer.

 _Nope_. 

Seconds trickled by, as if the sands of time were molasses instead.

Closer.

 _No_.

Close.

Close.

Cl--

_NOW!_

With a brisk move, Gojyo took the headband with both hands, raised it above his head and shoved it abruptly down to what he hoped was the right place, praying that the seal somehow found Goku's real head in the middle of this dimensional funhouse.

Cthulhu's immediate roar was so loud it made Gojyo's body vibrate and his eardrums hurt. He protected his head out of instinct, but nothing else happened and, slowly, Gojyo lowered his arms again when the bellow started to die out.

The feeling of hateful dread had dramatically decreased and Gojyo felt a spark of hope ignite in his chest. Okay, the day had still been pretty terrible, but all his fantastically crappy decisions seemed to be worki--

The world sped up suddenly, cutting his thoughts short.

Something-- pain, for one-- exploded in his back. 

No, wait, it had been the other way around... something had collided (a stray tentacle? A slimy hand?) full force against his back and sent him flying across the hall. It was he who was moving at the speed of light and not the world.

“Nooooo!!!!” Hakkai's voice howled.

Shit, he couldn't breathe. 

Not that he had ever wanted to know, but Gojyo now understood how a baseball felt when hit by a bat.

The pain in his back had expanded and now his whole body was just a mass of agony, all of his nerves freaking out, hysterical. Fucking hell, the hurt even pulsed as if it were fucking alive. And if he was not mistaken, he had even heard a crack at the moment of the impact. Holy fucking shit, not that, please, not that...

He opened his eyes just in time to see a wall coming at him at full speed.

“Fuck,” he thought he said. He didn't, because there was not enough water in his lungs, but at least he half-mouthed it. It was the thought that counted anyway.

He hit the fucking wall and the pain exponentially exploded.

Gojyo couldn't even scream.

“Gojyooo!!!”

Hakkai's voice sounded torn. It nearly hurt more than his back. No, wait, what the hell was he saying, that was fucking impossible. Nothing could hurt worse than his back. Fucking shit.

Still fighting to breathe, Gojyo made out Hakkai's godly shape pushing away what was left of Cthulhu-- the Great Old One looked more transparent now, in a way, and like he was shrinking, Goku's hair shorter-- and moving his massive body towards where Gojyo was currently laying. Wherever that might be. Close to a wall, for certain.

 _So you can still talk like a normal person instead of choking on your own tongue; or your tentacles; or whatever_ , he thought at Hakkai, strangely amused. He then wanted to sigh. _Dammit, even as a bald, slimy, extraterrestial ancient god bigger than fuck I find you beautiful_.

 _Not Goku, though_ , he added, thinking it important.

His eyes closed without him even noticing. Shit, it really, really hurt.

 _Thanks fuck I wasn't the most useless piece of trash this time_ , he thought right before blacking out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know this is a terrible point in the story to take a break, but I'm forced to stop updating daily. These last chapters have been longer and harder to write than expected and I just can't keep up. I apologize for the miscalculation. There are still around 20-30 snippets left, so I estimate that in a month I'll be able to resume the daily posting. I'd like to thank Avierra once again for putting up with me and the really short times I gave her to go over the chapters. Some of them were posted before being betaed, but the corrected version has already been uploaded. I would also like to thank all the people who have commented, it did mean a lot to me. See you in a month!


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